Laramie rolls out Open Finance portal tied to new Munis ERP; checkbook feature due in May

The City of Laramie showed council members a newly launched Open Finance portal and live demonstration on Feb. 11 that pulls data directly from the city’s recently implemented Munis enterprise resource planning system.

Director Wade said the city went live on Tyler Munis in the past year and staff made Open Finance available last month as a first phase. The portal derives its data directly from the financial software and is updated weekly, Wade said, with no additional manipulation by staff.

The demonstration and access

Senior accountant Spencer Couture walked council through the portal available at cityoflaramie.org under Departments → Administrative Services → Accounting and Finance → Open Finance. The portal’s first phase shows operating and capital revenues and expenditures, aggregated by fund, department, division, category or account. Couture demonstrated how users can filter by fund and drill down to see items such as electricity expenditures for a particular cost center; he used the ICE Event Center as an example.

Couture said the platform presents budgeted amounts (revised budget) alongside actuals and offers exportable tables and simple charts. Staff also created two‑page user guides and short video tutorials to help residents navigate the interface.

Checkbook feature, timing and scope

Wade and Couture told the council that a ‘checkbook’ feature showing individual payables/transactions is being finalized and is expected to be available in May. That feature will allow users to view payee-level transaction details; staff said the current phase purposefully focuses on budgetary measures that residents commonly ask about.

Data governance and next steps

Wade highlighted that the finance team validated totals and reconciled the portal’s numbers to council-approved budgets; Couture said the team validated data mappings and repeatedly tested displays. Councilors asked about searchability, whether other Wyoming jurisdictions used the same approach (staff said they found no Wyoming implementations during selection), and whether the portal could be embedded on the city home page. Wade said staff will consider adding prominent links and contact information for help.

Timing and accessibility

Couture said the portal’s data is refreshed weekly from the ERP and that staff will launch the transaction-level checkbook in a later phase after additional back‑end validation. The portal includes downloadable CSV exports and some built-in benchmarks; Wade asked councilors for feedback on next steps and told them staff will return with more demonstrations when the checkbook feature is ready.

What councilors asked

Councilors praised the transparency and asked about frequency of updates (weekly), the possibility of paid promotion for specific outreach (staff said paid promotion is available through the vendor if the council wishes), and whether invoice-level detail would be searchable when the checkbook arrives (staff said transaction details would be available but some linking and aggregation features remain under development).