The Background
Annapolis, Maryland, an American state capital City with an iconic and world-famous historic district, is home to almost 40,000 residents. Like all cities, Annapolis has a number of debt obligations, totaling more than $214 million.
With GASB-87 implementation on the horizon, the City’s finance team began to evaluate solutions to streamline their accounting processes to comply with the new accounting standard. They discovered DebtBook and quickly realized that the platform was both easy to use and “a one stop shop” to address their team’s needs, drive efficiency, and increase accuracy.
“Debt and lease management functionality combined in a single software solution wasn’t something we knew we needed… but now that we can manage both our debt and leases in a centralized location, our lives will be much better,” said Peju O., Senior Accountant.
Now, the City of Annapolis is equipped with DebtBook, a centralized platform that has streamlined the City’s accounting processes and enabled them to do more with limited resources.
The Problem
Historically, the City of Annapolis used an Excel spreadsheet to manage debt and leases. As the City’s debt obligations increased and the GASB-87 deadline approached, working from a spreadsheet was no longer sustainable. The City recognized the benefit of leveraging a new system for storing data and managing debt and leases. But the requirement was clear - the new system had to be easy-to-use and implement if they were going to make the switch from spreadsheets to software.
Specifically, the City needed a simple solution to streamline journal entries and financial reporting for debt and leases. They were also looking for an easy way to verify calculations of lease liabilities and receivables and complete end of year balances in the general ledger. Adding to these challenges, implementing the new GASB-87 standard presented yet another hurdle for the team.
With their existing finance models, data storage, and reporting all being managed within Excel, manual processes cost the team hours of valuable time and resources and presented opportunities for error.
The Solution
DebtBook equipped the City of Annapolis with the tools they needed to streamline City processes, reduce manual data management, and promote the finance team’s productivity.
Now, the City’s team of accountants uses DebtBook to manage debt and leases and is prepared for a successful GASB-87 implementation. The team specifically highlighted the following benefits:
Streamlined Reporting
Efficient and accurate reporting was one of the finance team’s major concerns since they regularly generate reports at a high volume. Now, they use DebtBook’s automated reporting tool to quickly and automatically generate year-end reports and to produce accurate data they have confidence in.
Reduced Manual Data Management
With the help of the DebtBook implementation team, Annapolis was able to transfer all of its data into the cloud-based platform with ease. Now, manual data management and siloed, error-prone information is a challenge that the team no longer faces. The City can grant permission for team members to access the data at any time and from any location, and they are all working from a single source of truth.
Increased Efficiency
DebtBook has empowered the City of Annapolis’ Finance Department to quickly locate the information they need within one centralized hub. Using a single location for debt and lease management gives the team more time to focus on other value-add activities. Now, they also have an easily accessible audit trail to track and provide visibility into historical activities.
The Impact
With DebtBook, the City of Annapolis has significantly reduced the amount of time spent on reporting. The automated reporting functionality has simplified the finance team’s ability to look at their year-end balances and tie that back to the general ledger. Now, the team can access the reports they need in minutes, enabling them to allocate time and resources back to more value-add activities for the City.
“Before using DebtBook, I would spend hours working on Excel to generate a report. With DebtBook, I can run a report and extract the data I need in minutes”, said Nikki O., Senior Accountant.
The City plans to continue leveraging its new debt and lease management system to further simplify their accounting processes. With DebtBook, they can grant auditors access to view any necessary reports, supporting documentation, and historical data – all without having to wait on an email or spreadsheet. This functionality will save both internal and external team members time.
The City also plans to take full advantage of DebtBook to easily implement and maintain ongoing compliance with GASB-87. Using DebtBook will help drastically reduce the time, stress, and resources required to accomplish this time-sensitive initiative.
Said Nikki O., “DebtBook is a simple tool to use with easy to understand requirements. We anticipated that Debtbook was going to be easy to implement - and it was!”
