Hutto, Texas

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE

Adopt an efficient and user-friendly budgeting software to revolutionize how Hutto handles its budgeting process, with a focus on transparency, collaboration, and streamlined operations across departments.

We really appreciate the way ClearGov’s Operational Budgeting platform works in that we’re able to assign line items, set a deadline, and review those line items, then go through and ‘thumbs up’ and ‘thumbs down’ each individual budget request. It’s very handy. It cut down on a lot of the administrative work and the in-depth communication work, making it a lot easier to coordinate such a big project like the city’s budget.

Ethan Sims,
Budget Analyst, City of Hutto, TX

CHALLENGE

The City of Hutto, Texas faced challenges in its budgeting process, which relied heavily on legacy systems, like Excel spreadsheets.

Like many other governments, Hutto recognized the limitations of spreadsheets, such as being error-prone and lacking true collaboration to receive input from department heads. Spreadsheets also did not support the level of transparency and efficiency desired by both city management and the community, especially when it came to sharing the city’s capital improvement plan and budget.

After researching several software options, the city landed on ClearGov and implemented Operational Budgeting.

SOLUTION

ClearGov presented a solution to streamline operations, improve accuracy, and enhance transparency to change how the City of Hutto approached its budgeting process.

The city began diving into ClearGov’s software around March, ahead of their budget process that starts in the summertime. This preparation period allowed the team to get familiar with the software’s capabilities and functionality.

A major factor in the smooth onboarding process was ClearGov’s exceptional customer support. The city’s team had direct access to ClearGov’s support team, who were always ready to assist, whether it was answering a phone call, responding to an email, or joining a Zoom call. This level of support was critical for the city team, especially when facing tight state-mandated budget deadlines.

Transitioning to ClearGov came with a slight learning curve for the City of Hutto’s staff as they moved from traditional spreadsheet-based budgeting to a modern software solution. The software’s intuitive design, combined with comprehensive training resources and customer support, supported the transition and helped the city quickly learn the new tool.

The department heads initially showed some hesitancy in adopting a new software, which is a common response to change. However, the transparency and efficiency offered by ClearGov quickly turned this apprehension into enthusiasm. Department heads appreciated having direct input into their budgets and the clarity the software brought to the process. Everyone agreed the improved collaboration, accuracy, and time savings were well worth the effort.

City staff also appreciated the audit trail feature of ClearGov, which simplified tracking decisions and changes within the budget. This feature improved accountability and transparency, which made it easier to justify budgeting decisions to department heads, the city council, and the public.

In their second year using ClearGov, the City of Hutto is focused on fully utilizing the Capital Budgeting and Personnel Budgeting modules. Like many other cities, residents are naturally concerned about capital infrastructure projects, like roads, so the city is looking forward to using the software’s project pages to communicate the status of these projects. They also plan to use the personnel tools to implement step plans for streamlined salary management.

I would say, year over year, city council specifically noted that this was the best budget process that they’ve been a part of for members who have been on the city council for upwards of 6 years. They were very impressed with the budget process and ClearGov was a very important part of that.

David Amsler,
Assistant to the City Manager, City of Hutto, TX