How the City of Las Vegas Uses Caseware for Accounting Efficiency
The City of Las Vegas takes a continuous improvement approach to refinements, and the work of their Finance Department is no different. They are constantly working to improve their methods, so decision-makers can have confidence in the city’s financial reporting and make better decisions in the future.
Financial reporting for the city was typically viewed as a complex, time-consuming, and challenging task. For years, the need to ensure financial data was accurate and consistent filled the work hours of numerous employees within the city’s Finance Department. When it came time to make a change, Las Vegas turned to Caseware Working Papers to make their financial reporting easier and more efficient.
Challenge
The city’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report and other significant financial reporting documents were traditionally labor-intensive, time-consuming affairs for the Finance Department. Completion of the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report relied on Word and Excel files, as well as manual reconciliations on a whiteboard. They also relied heavily on the institutional memory of a single long-term employee to understand year-over-year information and assumptions.
In 2015, with increased public scrutiny of municipal finances and the desire to make processes more efficient, cost-effective, and transparent, it was clear to the Finance Department that the old way of doing things was no longer sustainable.
Solution
The decision was made to implement a tool to help the City of Las Vegas’ Finance Department improve its financial reporting.
The city ultimately decided to adopt Caseware’s Working Papers solution to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its financial statement preparation and engaged Gray CPA Consulting, a technology consulting company with extensive experience working with municipal governments to implement Caseware solutions.
The move away from Word and Excel files to Caseware Working Papers has meant that staff no longer manually sift through paperwork to ensure information is accurate and balanced, saving time, effort, and budget.
“I can now go into Oracle, pull the GL extract, flow it into Caseware - and all the data goes where it needs to go.”
-Paul Bresnahan, Financial Analyst,
City of Las Vegas
Results
Staff in the City of Las Vegas’ Finance Department report that automating processes with Caseware Working Papers has made their financial reporting more efficient and effective.
Workflows and activities within Working Papers have allowed the department to eliminate manual activities and minimize reliance on people’s memory for consistent reporting and balances. The preparation of the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report is far more efficient, and the staff has greater confidence in the information and financials they are reporting. Thanks to reducing labor-intensive report preparation, staff in the Finance Department can spend more time on higher-value activities, providing better support and information to support the city’s financial decision-making.
Likewise, Caseware Working Papers has given management within the Finance Department more insight into financial reporting and a global overview of analysts’ different accounting activities. Mistakes and errors can be caught and corrected early, so they do not cause issues down the road.
Interested in how Caseware Working Papers can make your financial reporting easier and more efficient? Contact us today to learn more.
