Amarillo council pushes staff to publish monthly check registers, seeks 36‑month lookback

The Amarillo City Council debated how to make city financial transactions more transparent and directed staff to begin posting reconciled monthly check registers from Jan. 1, 2025, while researching whether a 36‑month historical lookback is feasible.

Finance staff (Laura Stores) told the council that the city will produce a standardized monthly check register that comes directly from its financial software and recommended posting bank account ledgers quarterly (which include wires and deposits) after reconciliation and limited redaction of confidential information.

Council members pressed staff on how far back the city could go. Stores said the city switched financial software on Jan. 1, 2025, and historical reporting from the old system is limited and more difficult to customize. Councillors expressed concern about posting an incomplete historical record (for example, check registers without the matching wire transfers and deposits) and asked staff to present options — including a phased approach that starts with current‑year posting and returns examples from the legacy system.

“Let’s go ahead and start being transparent with current year back to January 1,” one councilmember said; others favored a full 36‑month lookback if staff can reasonably extract and present deposits and wires so the archive is useful. Staff committed to posting January‑March 2025 reconciled data within a few weeks and to provide examples of historical output from the old software for council review.

The council discussed export formats (PDF for public display, with an option to provide Excel/CSV for analysis) and the potential cost and staff time needed to pull older records. Staff said they would proceed with the immediate posting plan and return to council with more information about the retrospective 36‑month archive and expected timelines.