Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Finance Operations topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Finance director outlines department operations, ERP work and transparency improvements
Summary
Interim finance director Patrice Sutton presented the finance department’s structure, workload, reporting improvements and progress on a countywide ERP (enterprise resource planning) implementation intended to improve transparency and centralized functions.
Patrice Sutton, interim director of finance, presented an annual update to the Financial & Administrative Committee on April 3, describing the department’s organization, recent activity and workstreams for an enterprise resource planning implementation that staff say will increase transparency and automation.
Sutton said the finance department has 24 full-time employees (20 in Waukegan and four at Public Works in Libertyville) and a budget of approximately $2.5 million, largely personnel costs. The department includes accounting and financial reporting, budget, purchasing, and centralized financial services (CFS). She thanked purchasing manager Yvette Alberon and budget manager Mike Wheeler for their work.
Sutton described current volumes: 45 bids and RFPs in fiscal 2024 and 98 items on the buying plan for 2025. She said the CFS group—centralized about five years ago—assumes requisition, invoice and reimbursement tasks for departments, relieving them of transactional work. Asked whether the service is charged back to departments, Sutton said only certain vehicle maintenance and support-shop printing are charged; most finance, IT and HR services are not charged back, although an indirect cost report is prepared annually for grant purposes.
Sutton outlined the county’s ERP project (Workday and related modules) and said finance is engaged in numerous work streams including banking, financial accounting, inventory, projects, grants, payroll and budgeting. She said finance is in “customer confirmation sessions” with 14 sessions for the week and 10 the following week.
Sutton also showed where the public can find financial reports: the monthly claims/ warrant list (now with p-card spend), separate county board travel and travel-exception reports, annual comprehensive financial reports, vendor-expenditure summaries, and the budget documents. She said the team is working on improving the economic-indicator “stoplight” dashboard to focus on material revenues and to enable better drill-downs once ERP is implemented.
Sutton highlighted Lake County’s AAA bond ratings from Moody’s and S&P Global and the finance department’s awards from the Government Finance Officers Association for budget and financial reporting.
Committee members asked about capacity to centralize more departments into CFS; Sutton said more staff would be needed now but the ERP automation could create efficiencies and allow expanded centralization. Members also discussed posting countywide elected-official expenses; Sutton said the information is public and could be added to regular reporting if the board asks staff to do so.
Sutton closed by inviting committee feedback and offering to return with slide examples; committee members expressed support and asked for further discussion during budget hearings.
