Kootenai County Auditor Randy asked the Board of County Commissioners on May 30 to add $110,000 to the FY26 budget to hire an outside software consultant to begin a search for a new countywide accounting system.

The auditor told commissioners the county's current accounting software, New World (a Tyler Technologies product), is in an "end of sale" phase and lacks necessary functions the county now needs. "We are losing a lot of productivity because we have to do a lot of manual, time consuming, and cumbersome processes outside of the system," the auditor said. He said the county must now track leases and certain IT arrangements under a new accounting rule and that New World "has no plans to create any type of functionality for us to track leases and software agreements, which is something that we're required to do by law."

The auditor said the $110,000 consultant would perform a needs assessment, develop an RFP, evaluate vendors and assist with vendor contract review. He told the board the county has discussed the timeline with Information Technology and Human Resources and expects vendor selection and contracting to take about a year, with onboarding and integration likely requiring another two to three years. "Choosing a new financial system is a very important decision and will affect the county for the next 15 plus years," the auditor said.

Why it matters: county staff described manual workarounds for budgeting, payroll step calculations and annual financial reporting that the current system cannot perform, and said continuing on New World would require paying for separate software to meet accounting rules. The auditor told the board the IT department has an assigned IT fund balance (approximately $1.5 million) and that the consultant request could be funded from that balance so the county would "not need to levy property tax for this request."

Details discussed at the meeting included a separate software subscription to track leases and capitalized IT agreements (the county cited an estimated $30,000-per-year lease for a new lease-tracking product) and the operational effects of continuing manual processes. IT staff confirmed they had capacity to participate in a cross-department selection process and that a consultant would bring vendor-market expertise the county lacks in-house.

County commissioners asked about conversion difficulty and timing; the auditor and IT staff advised a measured, multi-year transition to avoid rushed conversions and data errors. The auditor said he preferred "a slow roll" over a multi-year implementation to ensure a thorough vendor selection and migration.

Ending: The request remained at the discussion stage in the FY26 review; commissioners did not take a final budget vote during the session. The auditor recommended returning to the board with an RFP and consultant scope if the commissioners approve the one-time budget to begin the procurement process.