DuPage County reallocates funds, extends consultant contract as Dayforce payroll implementation slips

DuPage County’s Finance Committee on June 24 approved budget transfers and contract adjustments to keep the county’s multi-department Dayforce payroll implementation moving forward, reallocating $470,420 from contingency funds and extending an implementation contract with OnActuate Consulting through Jan. 31, 2026.

County officials told the committee the project — intended to consolidate multiple timekeeping and payroll systems used across roughly 4,500 county employees — is behind the original schedule and still has major technical obstacles to clear before a successful “go live.”

Christine Clevenger, a human-resources representative working on the project, said, “we are still in the implementation of Dayforce … we did anticipate it to be live at this point. However, … we had some obstacles that were unforeseen.” She said the county’s goal is to go live in the fourth quarter of 2025 but flagged two outstanding items: a Medicare/Medicaid report required by the county’s care center and integration of the Regional Office of Education’s (ROE) finance interface.

Member Kajewski raised the cost and timing, saying, “We’re putting a half a million dollars out of contingencies into the software implementation,” and asked why the expense and the obstacles were not anticipated earlier. Several committee members likewise pressed for clearer cost accounting and a written implementation history or presentation that would document consulting decisions, initial scope and the reasons for delays.

County staff described steps taken this year to reallocate existing implementation and managed-service funds rather than request new money. The committee approved a transfer (budget transfer 25-1567) to move $470,420 from contingencies to professional services to cover continued implementation costs. The committee later approved a related change in purchase orders: a decrease of $373,750 on a Ceridian HCM (Dayforce) purchase order and a corresponding increase of $373,750 on a purchase order issued to OnActuate Consulting US Inc. The OnActuate purchase order was extended to Jan. 31, 2026 to complete implementation work.

Committee members asked for better documentation of what has been spent so far, the project’s scope at inception, and the consulting decisions that led to the current course. Member Guse asked whether the county was “past the point of no return” financially and suggested staff evaluate whether the county should have pursued an outsourced payroll provider earlier; Member Kraszewski and others noted DuPage has explored outsourcing in the past and that the county’s complex, departmentalized systems make integration difficult.

Staff said the county has run numerous, frequent implementation meetings — roughly several a week with teams across finance, IT, HR and the care center — and that much of the extra work reflects attempts to consolidate many legacy systems (including Kronos and PowerTime) and homegrown processes into Dayforce. The county also said it has reduced planned managed services spending to repurpose funds for implementation labor and overtime rather than requesting new budget authority.

The committee approved the budget transfers and purchase-order adjustments by voice votes; no roll-call tallies were recorded in the minutes. Members directed staff to provide additional detail to the committee: a written implementation history of decisions and consulting engagements and a status briefing on unresolved items such as the CMS report and ROE integration.

The county’s timeline, as reported at the meeting, now anticipates a hold for outstanding integrations with a target go-live later in 2025; staff said they will return to the finance committee with more detail and that departments continue to test parallel payroll runs.