GFOA Award Winners Increasingly Adopt ClearGov’s Website-Based Digital Budget Book Solution

By using website-based ClearGov Digital Budget Book software, local governments save hundreds of hours and create budget books that follow GFOA best practices.

Maynard, Mass. – Since ClearGov® launched its website-based Digital Budget Book solution at the beginning of June 2020, more than 100 local governments, including 33 GFOA award winners, have leveraged the software to revolutionize the way they develop and present their required annual budget book. ClearGov’s Digital Budget Book delivers budget books as interactive websites and leverages the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) Distinguished Budget Presentation Award criteria to make them clear, organized, and visually-appealing. The software also provides the ability to download the budget book in ready-to-print PDF format and even offers simple GFOA-suggested best practices to automatically improve each page.

Traditionally, creating and maintaining a Word-based budget book is a time-consuming, manual and error-prone process. Every year local governments suffer the arduous task of creating their budget books, usually pieced together from multiple spreadsheets and other information sources. While great effort and care goes into the creation of the printed budget book, residents often struggle to understand its contents and quickly become frustrated.

With ClearGov’s web-based Digital Budget Book solution, government data populates into a website-based budget book with colorful graphics and easy-to-read charts at the click of a button.

“ClearGov’s solution is the future of developing and presenting a budget book. We were able to easily build an interactive, digital version for online readers and a printed version for individuals who prefer the traditional approach. Digital Budget Book is sure to streamline the budgeting process,” said Macy Walker, Financial Analyst – Budget for the City of El Mirage, Arizona.

ClearGov Digital Budget Book uses an ERP export, a budget spreadsheet, or a budget built in ClearGov Budgets to create a dynamic budget presentation that is pre-populated with eye-catching charts, tables, and graphs — making it easy for residents to understand complex financial data. Changes made to the government’s data automatically update in the budget book, eliminating manual data entry and saving time and money.

The finished budget book is a mobile-friendly website that is also accessible according to standards set by the Americans with Disabilities Act. If the government needs to provide a hard copy to residents, ClearGov’s Digital Budget Book provides an option to download the budget book by section, or in its entirety, as a print-friendly PDF.

Finance directors can also customize their budget books with graphics and style elements matching their town’s branding, and include personalized commentary to provide context and clarity about the data.

“The feedback has been amazing. Our department heads think ClearGov is a really cool solution, and our council members are head over heels for the new transparency site and digital budget book. It really is exactly what we were looking for,” said Charlie Funderburk, City Manager, MPA, ICMA-CM for the city of Tega Cay, South Carolina.

“We’re proud that so many local governments rely on ClearGov to help them more efficiently and effectively manage budget cycles and communicate with their communities. The continued popularity of the website-based Digital Budget Book underscores that governments want to modernize their processes and build trust with residents,” said ClearGov CEO and co-founder Chris Bullock.

Like all ClearGov solutions, Digital Budget Book is powerful enough to support local governments of every size, yet affordable enough for even the smallest towns and villages. Digital Budget Book is fully integrated with ClearGov Budgets, a budgeting and forecasting service that can save governments even more time and money during the budgeting process. Digital Budget Book can also be used as a standalone solution alongside popular government accounting platforms.

About ClearGov:
ClearGov® is the leading provider of Budget Cycle Management software, focused on helping local governments and their department heads streamline the budgeting process by automating workflow, increasing collaboration, and centralizing data. ClearGov solutions are powerful enough to support local governments of every size, yet affordable enough for even the smallest towns and villages. Hundreds of communities across the country rely on our cloud-based Budget Cycle Management solutions to modernize their budgeting process. For more information, visit www.cleargov.com.