Transforming Public Sector Financial Management with NaviLine

In the public sector, financial management comes with many challenges – from limited budgets to outdated systems and everything in between.

Many agencies become comfortable with inefficient workarounds. Instead of finding better ways to manage finances, payroll, government assets and more, they stick to what worked 20 years ago. 

However, with the current challenges facing the public sector, agencies can’t afford to be complacent. Because modern technology doesn’t just improve operational efficiency and save money, it also improves employee satisfaction and engagement – two things every government needs in the midst of a hiring and retention crisis.

In this article, we’ll explore the financial management challenges facing government agencies today, as well as introduce a one-stop solution that can transform your financial operations.

Challenges of Public Sector Financial Management

Budget Constraints

With the majority of revenue coming from taxes, government budgets are fixed and limited. Barring legislative action, public agencies have to work around tight budgets on a year-to-year basis. This requires careful allocation of funds across various programs and services. It makes financial planning more restrictive.

During periods of economic downturn or fiscal tightening, public budgets are often the first to be cut. This forces agencies to do more with less, potentially compromising the quality and accessibility of public services. 

In the face of these challenges, financial management requires careful prioritization of projects, innovative cost-saving measures, and continued advocacy. Public grants can help, especially if you have a specific project in mind that improves the community.

Compliance and Reporting

It’s not easy adhering to laws and regulations that constantly change. And yet government agencies at every level must ensure that all financial activity, reporting and records comply.

Maintaining compliance requires administrative effort and resources. It requires your staff to monitor regulatory changes and update processes accordingly. Failure to comply can result in legal penalties, financial losses and damage to your agency’s credibility.

Reporting requirements add another level of complexity. Reports must appease oversight bodies (city councils, audit firms, etc.), policymakers and the public. As such, the reporting process requires a lot of time and effort to do correctly and without financial repercussions.

Outdated Systems

Outdated systems include on-prem systems, disparate software solutions, or even a combination of Excel and paper-based processes. Either way, these systems increase the risk of human error and data breaches. Without the latest security capabilities or reliability of the cloud, your agency is more vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Old systems are also inefficient, requiring more time to manage your finance, HR and payroll responsibilities. At the end of the day, old systems and processes end up costing your agency more money.

That’s why upgrading to modern financial management systems is essential. Unfortunately, depending on the solution, it can be challenging to find a cost-effective solution that all stakeholders are willing to adopt.

How NaviLine Transforms Financial Operations

The CentralSquare NaviLine suite is a one-stop solution for your public administration needs. It integrates various finance functions into a single platform:

• Finance management
• Payroll management
• Community development
• Utility billing
• Workforce management
• Asset management

This integration helps eliminate redundancies, reduce errors, and speed up processes like budgeting, payroll and procurement.

With access to real-time financial data and advanced reporting capabilities, NaviLine empowers you to make data-driven decisions and plan your budget more strategically. It streamlines your most routine tasks to save your team time, and it adheres to the latest security measures so all sensitive data is protected.

Not all public sector financial management solutions are built equally. Fortunately, NaviLine was designed to meet the needs of government agencies like yours. The “proof is in the pudding,” or in this case, NaviLine’s key features.

NaviLine Key Features and Products

Financial Management

Ready to simplify your financial, HR and payroll processes with cloud-based financial software that easily scales to meet your needs? Featuring advanced analytics and customizable workflow automation tools, NaviLine empowers you to make smarter decisions for the financial health of your community. Plus, with improved accountability and transparency, the public has more insight into how their tax dollars are spent.

Asset Management

With Asset Management, you get a comprehensive enterprise asset record system for

managing assets, customer requests, work orders, and resources and inventory, as well as ensuring best practices around regulatory compliance. 

Asset Management provides an overview of your physical assets’ repair status, performance, longevity, and cost to replace or renew them. These insights help you avoid unplanned expenses and build your capital reserves. With the status of your assets at your fingertips (water mains, roads, sewers, etc.) your community can run smoothly.

Work Management

The CentralSquare Work Management add-on integrates with all other NaviLine systems so you can automate work requests, manage facility maintenance, track complaints, monitor job costing and more from a single platform. It lets you track all project expenses in real-time and generate detailed reports on work orders, maintenance activities, etc.

Citizen Portal

The NaviLine Citizen Portal is a simple, straightforward way to engage citizens with modern, self-service options. It provides online access to utility billing, planning and zoning, permitting and business licensing. It lets you go green with a paperless work-order process. The citizen portal also gives inspectors mobile access to all the information they need from one, central location.

Community Development

Your community development department works hard to balance day-to-day demands with long-term vision and goals. You have to navigate aging infrastructure and ever-shifting priorities while citizens want real-time access to public information.

With the Community Development solution in NaviLine, your municipality gets powerful tools to better serve your citizens and business owners. Ready to maintain a healthy, thriving community? NaviLine provides access to data analytics, GIS integration, mobile functionality and much more to help you get there.

Success Story with NaviLine Financial Management

The City of Gardner, KS wanted to keep up with its increasingly mobile and digitally-connected community. The city wanted to provide higher levels of accessibility, efficiency, and financial transparency, as well as save money.

Before implementing NaviLine, Gardner staff had to manage security compliance reporting by themselves. Meeting annual compliance standards sometimes led to extensive updates that required long, grueling staff hours on weekends. With NaviLine’s cloud-based solution, Gardner can automate the process to save time and easily comply with strict regulatory requirements.

“CentralSquare provides that ‘extra team’ and availability, which meant our services were functional 24/7 for our customers.”

Amy Foster, Business Service Manager, Department of Finance

Garner’s previous on-prem system required specialized IT resources, utility billing clerks, code enforcement officers, accountants and more. Now with NaviLine, many of these routine tasks are automated and simplified. Not only that, the CentralSquare team provides specialized expertise 24/7 so Garner’s staff can focus on the city’s most important goals and priorities.

“We have always been fortunate with CentralSquare staff. From sales and implementation to support, CentralSquare staff is by our side, and they always help us stay on track.”

Amy Foster, Business Service Manager, Department of Finance

Interested in learning how CentralSquare’s NaviLine system can help your small- to mid-size agency? Schedule a discovery call today and discover the time and cost savings provided by an all-in-one, cloud-based solution designed for the public sector.