Cochise County finance staff ask supervisors for CPA contract, funds to support ERP rollout

Cochise County finance leaders asked the Board of Supervisors on Wednesday, April 30, for funding to hire a certified public accounting (CPA) firm to prepare required annual reports and to provide consulting support while the county implements a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

Monica Miranda, director of finance for Cochise County, told the board at a work session in the Supervisor Hearing Room that the finance department's 2025 salary budget totaled $1,148,003.80 and its operations-and-maintenance budget totaled $247,004.51. Procurement's 2025 salary budget was $248,239 with an operations-and-maintenance total of $53,025. For FY26, Miranda said finance is requesting an increase of about $50,400 in O&M and a separate contract to cover preparation of the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) and the Annual Expenditure Limitation Report (AELR).

Why it matters: Miranda said the CPA contract would free finance staff to focus on implementation of the county's new ERP and provide "an extra set of eyes" on reconciliations, new Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) implementations and audit deadlines.…