Cochise County finance officials outline budget, ERP rollout and request outside audit help

Cochise County finance leaders told the Board of Supervisors at a work session Wednesday that they are requesting outside certified public accounting help to prepare the county's annual comprehensive financial report and related reports while the county implements a new enterprise resource planning system.

Monica Miranda, Cochise County finance director, told supervisors the finance department's 2025 salary budget totaled $1,148,003.80 and its operational budget totaled $247,004.51, and that the department is requesting roughly $50,400 in additional operations-and-maintenance funding for fiscal 2026 largely to pay a contracted CPA firm and related consulting services. "The finance department budget is a fairly small sized department in the general fund compared to the others in the county," Miranda said. She said the contracted firm would assist with preparing the annual comprehensive financial report (ACFR), the annual expenditure limitation report (AELR), audit reconciliation review and financial consulting services.

The request comes as the county prepares to implement a Tyler Technologies enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that will replace the county's current New World accounting system and ADP payroll functions. Miranda said the county has about 50 confirmed training and implementation sessions and needs staff time freed from ACFR and AELR preparation so finance can focus on the ERP setup: "We are implementing a new ERP system ... and we need to ensure that it's set up correctly," she said.

Among specifics Miranda provided: the procurement function recorded a 2025 salary budget of $248,239 and operations-and-maintenance of $53,025, and the procurement group is not requesting FY2026 changes; finance comprises 13 full-time staff and procurement three; grants administration includes one grants administrator and two grants analysts who handle federal awards reporting and reimbursements. Miranda described software the department uses: the county imports trial balances and budget performance reports into a commercial reporting product referred to in the presentation as Gravity to build the ACFR and the AELR, and the county uses modules to track lease and subscription reporting under GASB 87 and GASB 96.

Miranda and staff said the contracted CPA would also provide a second set of eyes on reconciliations and assist with new Governmental Accounting Standards Board implementations. The presentation noted the Arizona Auditor General participates in the county audit process; Miranda said the contracted consultant would be present during audit meetings to help accelerate responses to auditors and meet the county's March 31 audit deadline.

Supervisors asked about costs and scope. A slide referenced an $80,000 figure for one scope of work; a supervisor noted a separate estimate he had heard of roughly $280,000 to $350,000 for a broader review. Miranda said the county would put the work out to bid and that one goal of a contracted review would be to identify overlaps and redundancies across departments so the county can centralize or streamline where appropriate.

Miranda described expected benefits of the Tyler ERP: tighter integration to eliminate many manual journal entries and allow direct access to invoices from the ledger, better chart-of-accounts mapping to financial statement reporting, and reduced manual reconciliations. She also described current decentralization: several large departments maintain their own finance staff who do day-to-day processing and then route records to the county finance office for reporting. Miranda said that structure provides operational knowledge at the department level but contributes to multiple systems and inefficiencies that the ERP aims to reduce.

No motion or formal vote was taken during the work session. The presentation closed with staff noting the year-four license for the reporting software and continued planning for ERP implementation and audit support. The board scheduled an agenda preview meeting the following morning.