Ypsilanti, MI

★ GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award Winner ★

Primary Objective

As the City of Ypsilanti, Michigan consolidated staff, it became a priority to automate the process of creating their annual budget book. They specifically needed a GFOA-optimized and ADA-optimized budgeting software to create a more accessible and interactive budget book for residents, while making their internal processes more efficient.

Challenge

When Rheagan Basabica was promoted to Finance Director, his old position remained unfilled. His workload constraints put him on the search for a more efficient way to create and maintain the city’s annual budget book. He needed an automated solution that would save him countless hours of manual input and analysis.

Previously, Basabica used a mix of Microsoft Word and Excel to create the budget book that would eventually be exported to a PDF. There was no easy way to move data from the budget spreadsheets into the final budget book. It was a tedious, error-prone, and highly manual process.

Additionally, Basabica wanted the budget book to follow GFOA best practices and be ADA-optimized, making it easily accessible to all residents.

When I saw ClearGov and the fact that they offered a fully interactive digital budget book, I knew it was the future of budgeting. I immediately thought, why not start now?

Rheagan Basabica
Finance Director/Treasurer

ClearGov Solution

Basabica signed up for ClearGov’s Digital Budget Book solution in July. In just two months, he and all of his department heads completed and published their first website-based budget book. They are very pleased with the process and final product. Not only does ClearGov make the budget book process easier on his end and save him time, but the interactive charts and infographics make it easier for residents and councilmembers to understand complex financial data.

Basabica said one thing that really stood out was not having to keep track of page count. Now, when he adds a document, it formats the page numbers automatically. He is already looking forward to utilizing ClearGov for Capital Improvement planning, which is something they have not been able to tackle yet. He’s also looking forward to an even easier process when creating next year’s budget book, as all of the city’s base information and formatting preferences have been saved.

The website-based budget book was so impressive that Basabica used it to apply for a GFOA award, and he is happily sharing ClearGov solutions with Ypsilanti’s neighboring cities.

Moving forward, I know our budgeting process will be a lot easier! Instead of having to manually create new charts, our data in ClearGov’s Digital Budget Book auto-generates charts and graphs. This allows us to focus on the content rather than spending time on formatting.

Rheagan Basabica
Finance Director/Treasurer