Radnor Township, PA, School District

★ ASBO Meritorious Budget Award Recipient ★

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE

Streamline Radnor Township School District’s budget preparation process and make the resulting budget presentation more comprehensive and attractive.

“I would absolutely recommend the ClearGov product if you’re looking to do any kind of comprehensive budget document. And even if you’re not looking to submit for the GFOA or the ASBO awards, it really is just a great tool to put all of that information in a central source.” 

Brian Pawling
Business Administrator

Background

The Radnor Township School District serves one of the oldest municipalities in the U.S., Radnor Township, PA. The school district lies about 15 minutes outside of Philadelphia, and it serves a population of about 33,400 with a student population of about 3,500.  

Brian Pawling, Radnor Township School District Business Administrator, is a veteran of school district budgeting and a previous winner of ASBO’s Meritorious Budget Award. Using ASBO’s Meritorious Budget Award criteria and feedback on his previous award applications, Pawling had created and refined a budgeting template for building his budgets in Microsoft Word. By the time Pawling came to Radnor Township School District, he had an award-winning formula in place for budgeting. 

“ClearGov saved us a tremendous amount of time versus what my prior experience was of doing it in Excel and Word and doing all of that formatting.” 

Brian Pawling
Business Administrator

Challenge

Even with Pawling’s tried-and-true template, budget building and presentation at Radnor Township School District was a long, manual, laborious process. The district’s budget team would start by creating charts and graphs in Microsoft Excel, copy and paste them into Pawling’s template in Microsoft Word, and then format the images so that they would be centered on the page. This often yielded inconsistencies with formatting. 

Once Radnor Township School District’s budget documents were completed, they would then print out the entire budget and present their comprehensive annual budget report to the nine-member school board — in large binders. As they reviewed the documents, some school board members wanted line-by-line details while others wanted a more comprehensive summary. The result was back-and-forth discussions between the school board asking for certain information and Pawling’s team supplying it for them.

To complicate matters, the district had recently undergone a financial software conversion, This meant transitioning more than 10 years of historical financial data from one system to another. Ensuring continuity and accuracy across different reporting structures further complicated the budgeting process. 

All of these challenges fell solely on the shoulders of Pawling, his assistant, and occasionally other staff members in the business office. It was clear that Radnor’s budgeting processes were due for a change. 

“If anybody’s considering taking that next step and putting out a comprehensive budget document, the ClearGov product was fantastic and helped us start from the ground floor to what we were able to put together by the end.”

Brian Pawling
Business Administrator

Solution

Pawling was looking for ways to streamline Radnor Township School District’s budgeting work while making it more comprehensive when ClearGov reached out to the district. Pawling immediately liked the features he saw in ClearGov’s Digital Budgeting Book, and so did the school board. 

In reviewing the ClearGov platform, Pawling was particularly impressed with ClearGov Digital Budget Book’s intuitive design and customizability. He and his team appreciated Digital Budget Book’s ability to automatically generate key financial charts and tables, which eliminated the manual work of formatting and aligning data. Digital Budget Book’s pre-built templates and checklists ensured that Radnor Township School District’s budget book was structured correctly from the start, reducing errors and streamlining the process.

“After we demoed the ClearGov product and went through some of the functionality and reviewed it with the school board, they really liked the product as well. And so we decided to move forward with that and put together the budget book, which was the first that we had done here at Radnor in over a decade.” 

Brian Pawling
Business Administrator

Implementation

ClearGov provided dedicated support starting from Radnor Township School District’s initial account setup and product setup. The ClearGov Support Team provided Radnor Township School District with quick answers about product functionality — from major questions like using product features to more minor ones like formatting. Pawling and his team also made use of ClearGov’s extensive video library to learn Digital Budget Book and how to create charts and format their budget reports. 

Just two months after ClearGov initially reached out to Radnor Township School District, the district dove into implementing ClearGov. Before building its budget book, Radnor Township School District migrated data from its old financial system and its new system into the ClearGov platform, which served as a convenient centralized data repository. 

After getting Radnor Township School District’s information, ClearGov also set up charts of accounts and mapped the district’s data out. This allowed Radnor Township School District to go through the mapping to easily ensure that all data was reconciled correctly.  

From there, the district used ClearGov Digital Budget Book to create a professional, comprehensive budget book with built-in formatting, eliminating the need for manual document assembly. The district also structured its budget book according to ClearGov’s built-in ASBO Meritorious Budget Award checklist. Throughout the budget book’s creation, multiple team members were able to collaborate on the budget book simultaneously, reducing inefficiencies and communication gaps. 

“Really, the best thing about working with ClearGov has been the support.”

Brian Pawling
Business Administrator

Achievements

The transition to ClearGov resulted in a plethora of key benefits for Radnor Township School District’s budgeting process.

• Time Savings and Refocused Efforts: By leveraging ClearGov’s template-based pages with auto-generated content, the district was able to compile a comprehensive budget document in just three months. The automation features allowed staff to focus on data accuracy and strategic planning instead of formatting and design.
  
• An ASBO Meritorious Budget Award-Winning Budget Book: Radnor Township School District’s budget document created with ClearGov was submitted for the ASBO Meritorious Budget Award and won. ClearGov’s built-in GFOA Distinguished Budget Award and ASBO Meritorious Budget Award checklists made this possible by providing a detailed framework that guided Radnor Township School District in meeting ASBO’s Meritorious Budget Award criteria.
  
• Attractive Budget Presentation: Digital Budget Book’s customizable pages and auto-generated charts allowed the district to create a visually appealing, readable, and comprehensive budget book fit for both casual readers and the detail-inclined. The budget book was released both as an interactive online document and as a downloadable PDF, which allowed board members and the public to easily navigate the financial data in the format they wanted. 
  
• More Efficient Data Mapping: ClearGov’s automatic reconciliation of financial figures ensured accuracy across all reports, eliminating the need for manual data verification. This allowed staff to allocate more time toward analyzing financial trends and making data-driven decisions.
  
• Streamlined Collaboration: ClearGov’s team collaboration features enabled multiple team members to review and edit their assigned sections in real-time, ensuring accuracy and visibility. The centralized platform eliminated back-and-forth emails, smoother revisions, and a more cohesive final product.
  
• Stronger Community Engagement: Radnor Township School District received positive feedback from its board members and community stakeholders on its budget. Radnor Township School District’s superintendent noted how the district’s new budget book included so much new information that he’s used it as a reference when budgetary questions come up.
  
• Improved Scalability for Future Budgeting Needs: With ClearGov’s adaptable platform, the district can continue refining and enhancing its budget book each year. The software’s ability to integrate with financial data sources ensures long-term sustainability and efficiency in budget planning.

Producing an exemplary budget book can be hard work. But ClearGov made it easier and quicker for Pawling and Radnor Township School District by streamlining chart creation, data mapping, collaboration, meeting ASBO Meritorious Budget Award criteria, and more. Pawling and his team can now create more comprehensive yet attractive budget presentations in a fraction of the time it took them before. ClearGov can do the same for your school district, too.

“The ClearGov product really helped with the Meritorious Budget Award and the ASBO checklist, in having a lot of those built-in features already. It was more just a matter of us learning how to manipulate all of the information and all the functionality that the product offered us and then putting it into the template that we wanted to use.” 

Brian Pawling
Business Administrator