Hannibal council approves two software contracts to unify payroll, licensing and finance systems

Hannibal’s City Council on Feb. 3 voted to approve two contracts with software vendors to modernize the city’s accounting, licensing and payroll/timekeeping systems, city staff said.

City Manager Andy Dorian told the council staff vetted multiple vendors and involved police, fire and other department stakeholders in the selection. Bianca, the city’s finance director, told the council implementation and on-site training for the two programs will run “about $250,000” because the city’s general ledger contains more than 1,500 accounts and the vendors will need time to map those accounts and train staff.

Why it matters: Council members were shown that the new systems will replace several legacy platforms that do not communicate with one another, reduce manual spreadsheet work, provide employees direct access to PTO and pay stubs, and support electronic invoicing and document management for audits. Melissa in the clerk’s office said the current payroll process takes three days and staff expect the new timekeeping module to shorten that to about a day: “It takes about 3 days to do a payroll now. Hopefully this will cut that down to about a day and save manpower and hours,” she said.

Vendor selection and safeguards: Staff described a prior, unsuccessful implementation with a vendor called Cassell, saying the vendor “did not perform what it said it would” and lacked the flexibility needed for public-safety timekeeping. Bianca and Melissa said the city used that experience to require deeper demos, more stakeholder vetting and implementation oversight when choosing the replacement vendors.

Scope, timing and data migration: Bianca said the city plans to migrate five years of historical records into the chosen systems and that timekeeping alone could be live within roughly six months, with the full suite implemented in about 12–14 months. She said the consolidated subscription is expected to reduce annual licensing costs by approximately $5,000 once the older programs are retired.

Contracts and budget: Council adopted Resolution 25-90-26 to authorize a $101,550 implementation contract with Andrews Technology/HMS Inc. for the municipal public-safety scheduling, timekeeping and attendance solution, and Resolution 25-91-26 to authorize a $302,635 contract with BSNA Software for the municipal resource-planning suite. Taken together, the two contracts total $404,185. Bianca said the city has budgeted for the current fiscal-year portion of the work and will account for the remainder in upcoming budget workshops.

Security and records access: Staff said the systems are cloud-hosted and that workflows will be configured so users can view but not approve records outside their department; final approvers will be defined in the implementation. The implementation package includes document-management modules to attach invoices, grant files and asset documentation, which staff said will ease future audits.

Next steps: With council approval of the two resolutions, staff will finalize contracts and begin the vendor-led implementation and on-site training. City officials said they will return to council with budget adjustments as needed during upcoming budget workshops.