Cumberland County approves $112,282 increase for Infor CloudSuite ERP project; adds lease-accounting module

Cumberland County commissioners voted unanimously to increase the county's enterprise resource planning project budget and moved forward with adding an integrated lease-accounting module to the Infor CloudSuite implementation.

County finance staff told commissioners the Infor CloudSuite financials and procurement phase is in active testing and remains on track for a November 10 go-live. The Board of Commissioners approved a motion to amend the ERP capital project, adding up to $112,282 to bring the project's total to up to $6,929,942; the motion passed with all commissioners present voting yes.

The county's project team, led in the meeting by Beth Chornack and Robert (last name not specified in the record), reported the program is at about 34% complete by task count and that unit testing was roughly 87% finished. "Our go live date is November 10," Beth Chornack said, adding the county will continue work through that date on phase 1. Staff explained phase 1 covers finance and procurement only; human resources and payroll are slated for a later phase.

Robert described a newly reworked lease-accounting module from Infor that county staff say will simplify compliance with recent Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) lease rules and centralize lease information. "It would help manage the documents that are associated with the leases. It would eliminate duplicative efforts," Robert said, noting the module can track escalators, trigger notifications ahead of term expirations and generate appropriate journal entries.

Staff supplied a cost breakdown for the lease-accounting component. The software vendor price for the module is $39,081 (the first-year amount was shown prorated at $3,881), with recurring fees of $8,800 in years two through five. RPI quoted implementation services of $50,800 (about 254 hours) on a time-and-materials basis. Staff presented the combined software and implementation cost for the lease module as about $89,881 in total.

Commissioners and staff discussed operational impacts and data flows. Staff said the module can be used to centralize lease payments now handled by multiple offices — for example, certain magistrate/MDJ lease payments — and to reduce spreadsheet-based tracking. Bill (last name not given) explained the module would let offices know when leases are coming to term and could consolidate recurring payments into a single department-driven process. Staff said departments would need to enter accurate contract terms into the system so notifications and amortization run correctly.

Staff also told the board about a temporary additional Infor tenant (a separate cloud instance) needed to support HR data migration and testing; staff said the vendor indicated that environment would be required for about two years and that the cost was still being negotiated and therefore being kept confidential for now.

On project risks, staff identified fund accounting as the primary schedule vulnerability. They said Lawson (the county's legacy system) treated "companies" differently and the new setup uses a single company with funds, which staff believe will reduce closure complexity but requires careful testing. The team said system integrated testing (end-to-end scenarios from requisition to payment and reconciliation) is scheduled to begin at the end of March, followed by user acceptance testing and end-user training.

During discussion of the capital amendment, Dana (last name not specified) told the board the contract related to the tenant and other items was expected to be presented to the full Board of Commissioners the following day. "We're scheduled to have that contract come in front of you tomorrow at the BOC meeting," Dana said. Commissioners were told the capital project already includes contingency funds and that $3 million of the project had been covered by ARPA funding.

After deliberation, a commissioner moved to approve the amended capital project request for the ERP (Infor CloudSuite) with an increase up to $112,282 to a new total project cost up to $6,929,942. The motion received a second and passed unanimously.

Votes at a glance: - Motion to approve amended ERP capital project request with an increase up to $112,282 (new total up to $6,929,942): approved, yes votes — Commissioner Nieder; Commissioner Fauci; Commissioner Niebuhr; no votes — none; abstentions — none.

The project team said it will continue monthly steering-committee updates and coordinate with county staff to schedule the next board update on progress. Staff emphasized the November go-live timing was chosen so the county would have vendor support through the year-end close.