TeamBudget - News

The AMO provides products and services to its members, which represent most of the 444 municipal governments in Ontario. With a number of divisions in the organization, the association’s members have access to information and resources related to a variety of government activities and policies.

The TeamBudget application will integrate with Dynamics GP, their financial system, and provide detailed budget tracking within all their divisions, as well as extensive salary budgeting capabilities.

Installation will be completed this spring.

Responsible for multiple regions, divisions, and departments, the organization’s budgeting process is a very complex operation.

The TeamBudget solution will provide them with line item budgeting, scenario budgeting, and will save them a great deal of time during the reporting process. TeamBudget Salaries will also allow them to allocate employees across numerous projects and programs, to more accurately reflect costs.

Conducting a search on the internet, the Housing Authority discovered that TeamBudget provided them with all the functionality they were looking for, and will integrate with their financial system, Emphasys Elite.

The New Haven Housing Authority is an organization that responds to the ever changing needs of the City’s urban growth and redevelopment.

The latest version of TeamBudget Operating (2.0.178) has been tested and approved for compatibility with both Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. TeamBudget is now certified for use with both of these technologies.

The extensive testing process was conducted by Lionbridges VeriTest, an internationally recognized company in testing processes and methodologies.

The Educational Outreach Program is a branch of the University of Washington that offers programs to more than 40,000 students in over 6,000 programs and courses.

Program instructors are required to prepare a separate budget for each of these programs, including all associated costs. Each discipline was handling budgets in their own way, and forwarding them to finance in a number of different formats. The result was a piecemeal approach to budgeting, largely based on excel spreadsheets. The finance department turned to TeamBudget Operating to provide a consolidated, streamlined approach.

The integration is under way and will launch in October 2010 and for use in the 2011 budget season.

The City of Vernon, population 33,500 has purchased the TeamBudget Suite to streamline its Operating budgeting process.

The City’s previous budgeting process was very Excel dependent, and required a great deal of clerical work, producing and maintaining budgets. TeamBudget will provide them with automated salary and benefit forecasting, and will also free them to spend more time doing analysis, to better allocate resources.

Although the City investigated several options, the RFP response from Questica was what convinced them that it was the right solution. The RFP was thorough, well laid out, and the Questica team was able to help Vernon conceptualize the process and understand the big picture.

TeamBudget will integrate with Vadim, the City’s financial solution.

Wetaskiwin School District of Alberta, has purchased TeamBudget Operating to manage budgeting for their 18 schools. TeamBudget will replace Excel, and will be used in their administrative office and across all schools, to budget for personnel and individual school costs.

The City of Oceanside, CA has selected the TeamBudget Suite to manage its real-time budget information sharing. TeamBudget won the RFP process due to its ability to track internal service charges, manage salary planning, and to track actual vs. budget costs. The purchase includes TeamBudget Suite and all modules.

Key to the purchase of TeamBudget, for the Town of Ponoka, AB was the ability to reduce their budgeting cycle, through easier access to data, the elimination of double data entry, and easier reporting functionality. A key component will include integration with their Bellamy financial system.

IHA provides healthcare services to NASA’s Cape Canaveral and is required to track their budgets, according to stringent NASA protocol. They have found this process increasingly overwhelming due to the number of spreadsheets involved. TeamBudget Operating will streamline their process of maintaining real-time budget information and eliminate the need for spreadsheets. Implementation was completed this September.

The City of Leduc, population 17,000 has purchased TeamBudget Suite to provide them with a full featured budgeting solution.

The City has experienced tremendous growth recently, and they require a restructuring of their Chart of Accounts. TeamBudget is the solution that will support this restructuring, will integrate with their financial system, Dynamics GP, and will provide them with a flexible reporting tool that will fit their needs today and in the future.

Although the original plan was to develop an in-house solution, they attended a demonstration of TeamBudget, and quickly realized it would provide them with the functionality they required, and would save them a great deal of time and resources

Questica is pleased to announce the latest versions of TeamBudget Operating and Capital, our budgeting solutions for the public sector.

As of this release, both TeamBudget Operating v2.0.171 and Capital v2.04.0070 are now fully compatible with the very latest Microsoft technologies.

TeamBudget Operating includes a major overhaul of the salaries module to provide greater speed and convenience. New features include increased flexibility in salaries and benefits calculations, greater reporting possibilities, as well as a number of new reports.

For more details, or to schedule an upgrade, please contact us at (877) 707-7755, or at info@questica.com

Through RFP selection, the City of Victoria, population 75,000, has chosen the TeamBudget Suite to provide them with a seamless budgeting solution.

A disconnect between their financial software, JD Edwards, and their Excel based budget books motivated the City to find a dynamic solution that would allow them to not only create budgets more easily, but would also ensure there were no discrepancies between the information in JDE and Excel.

TeamBudgets’ web-based approach includes features such as multi-year budgeting and line item budgeting, and enables Victoria to capture real-time data, understand the impact of current budgets, and to prepare future budgets.

The City of Victoria evaluated a number of vendor solutions before selecting TeamBudget due to its features, pricing model, and Questica’s proven track record implementing with JD Edwards

The City of Kenora, population 16,000 has selected TeamBudget Operating, including Actual Costs and Email Notification modules.

Key features of TeamBudget that Kenora will be taking advantage of include:

• Project roll-ups – project information will be available at a summary level, right down to line item detail

• The ability to disable old projects, yet still search the data for future audits

• Scheduling of regular increases in Costing Centres - can be done on a line by line basis, or across the entire costing centre

The implementation will include integration with VailTech, the City’s financial system.

The Town of Prince George, BC, population 75,000, has selected TeamBudget Capital to fulfill its budgeting software requirements.

Finding its existing approach to budgeting inadequate, the Town turned to TeamBudget to provide them with the functionality they required with respect to budget entry, tracking budgets, workflow, and reporting and tracking reserves.

TeamBudget provides the Town with very flexible reporting features, including the ability to edit project summaries in custom reports, something that was not available in their previous system.

Additionally, the Town will now be able to compare last year’s version of a Capital project with this year’s, and understand the variances between each version.

Security was a particular challenge to the Town, and with TeamBudget, they are now able to set permissions based on user profiles, and to lock budgets once they have been approved.

Implementation of TeamBudget will be completed by the end of June, and will include integration with the Towns financial system, Oracle’s JD Edwards.

The City of Pleasanton, population 68,755, is improving its budgeting process, with the purchase of TeamBudget Suite.

The City has been using excel spreadsheets to manage their budgets and has found it very limiting, particularly in terms of controlling salaries. With TeamBudget Salaries, Pleasanton will now be able to account for personnel costs, and allocate position costs to one or more costing centers. They will also be able to automate salary projections, create multiple scenarios, and use formulas and variables to control spending in their budgets.

The first phase of implementation will include TeamBudget Operating and Salaries, followed by TeamBudget Capital, and will integrate seamlessly with Mitchell Humphrey, Pleasanton’s financial system.

The City of Camrose, population 16,000 has purchased TeamBudget Suite. The implementation is being completed in partnership with Bellamy Software, and includes integration with their financial package. TeamBudget Capital is being used for the 2009 budget year, and TeamBudget Operating will be introduced into the 2010 budget cycle.

The City of Brandon, population 42,000, has selected TeamBudget Suite to replace its previous Excel based approach to budgeting. Their reasons for replacing the system were fairly common – the old process was time consuming, prone to human error, and didn’t allow the City to capture the long term effect of budgeting decisions.

The implementation has been handled in partnership with Bellamy Software, who provides the City with its financial software.

The City of Naperville, IL, population 130,000, has replaced its outdated budget system with TeamBudget Capital.

An in-house budgeting solution was developed in house many years ago, but Naperville recognized the need for a more robust system that would not drain internal resources to modify and maintain.

Invited to respond to an RFP by Naperville, Questica was able to demonstrate the unique features that make TeamBudget stand out as a leader in budgeting software.

The city has completed a full budget cycle, and is pleased with the improvements they’re enjoying

Osceola County, population 230,000 has completed its RFP process by selecting Questica’s TeamBudget Suite.

TeamBudget’s Salary and Position Planning module was key to the County, and will enable them to automate the very complex job of labor cost management.

Implementation is scheduled to be complete by the end of March, and will include integration with Osceola’s financial system, Sungard

The RCMP, which receives its funding from the Federal Government, is required to submit a budget request annually. A lag in the process results in the Unit being required to develop requests for the coming year, before they receive the results of their previous years’ spending. This makes it difficult to predict what their spending requirements will be.

With the purchase of TeamBudget Operating, the Unit is now able to enter spending information as soon as it occurs. The advantage of having numerous reports at their fingertips enables them to make changes during the budget cycle, and to better prepare budget requests to the Government.

The City of Chesapeake, population 225,000, has purchased TeamBudget Suite to manage their Capital budget of $65 million, and Operating budget of $850 million.

The decision to purchase TeamBudget was based on the concern that their existing budget process was disconnected. The City knew if they could provide a more visible budget, decisions could be made more effectively. Timely information would provide for better decision making during tough economic periods.

Chesapeake’s users are particularly pleased with TeamBudget’s 85+ ready reports, as well as the adhoc abilities that will enable them to meet future reporting needs.

Questica has been able to meet the City’s short implementation deadline, and will implement seamlessly with their financial package, PeopleSoft.

The District of Sechelt, population 8,420, is improving its Budget Capabilities with the recent purchase of TeamBudget Operating and Salaries. The limitations of Excel based spreadsheets and the difficulty in forecasting made the Districts previous budget preparation difficult and time consuming.

TeamBudgets Scenarios feature will allow users to create multiple “What if” scenarios, and to understand the impact of each one over the budget, both short and long term. In addition, the Variables and Formulas features will assist users in putting their budget requests together.

TeamBudget will be integrated with the District’s financial package, Vadim

The Township of Centre Wellington, population 26,000 has chosen TeamBudget Suite to update its Capital and Operating budget preparation process.

The Townships aim in implementing a new solution is to replace the manual spreadsheets they were using, and to decentralize their process, enabling all users to prepare and manage their own budgets.

The new system will integrate with Centre Wellington’s financial package, Dynamics GP, and is scheduled to be completed in April

Shelby County has purchased Questica’s TeamBudget Capital and Operating. Questica, in partnership with MSGovern, will be providing a fully integrated financial solution, for the 100+ users involved in the budgeting process.

The County purchased TeamBudget in order to better manage their recently tightened $1.2 billion budget, a situation most counties are currently facing as a result of the economic downturn. TeamBudget will allow them to better allocate resources, manage long-term forecasts, and improve efficiency in the budget process

The Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville, population 28,000, plans to use TeamBudget Capital’s customizable fields to assist in meeting new PSAB reporting regulations.

Integrating with their Vailtech financial system, TeamBudget will also provide the Town with multi-year budgeting and the ability to import prior years’ budget for trend analysis.

The Town of Pincher Creek, population 3,600, aims to centralize their budgeting process, capture Actual vs. Budget comparison, and provide salaries forecasting.

TeamBudget Operating and Salaries modules will provide these capabilities, and will integrate with their existing financial system, MuniWare.

The Town plans to begin using TeamBudget in early 2009.

The Town of Brookhaven, population 450,000, has purchased TeamBudget Operating, Capital and Salary modules to provide them with a more efficient, user friendly budgeting system.

The Town has been using an Excel based budgeting approach, but has found this to be a rather cumbersome way to managing its $300M budget. The challenge was to find a solution that would not only address this concern, but would integrate with the existing Munis financial system.

TeamBudget’s Suite will improve the budgeting process by enabling users to centralize their budgeting, in an easy to use, web-based format. In addition, TeamBudget’s proficiency with Munis ensures a seamless integration for the Town of Brookhaven.

The City of Stockton, CA, population 280,000, has purchased TeamBudget Capital to manage their $997M, 5-year Capital Plan.

The City uses an Access database to assemble their CIP, and then manually enters this information into SunGard’s HTE financial system. Budget reports are pulled out of Access, but are not “book ready”.

After it was determined that upgrading the Access database would not provide them with the solution they were looking for, the City began reviewing off-the-shelf products. TeamBudget’s web-based solution, and proven track record integrating with HTE, assured the City of Stockton that it was the best fit for their requirements

Lac Ste. Anne has turned to Questica’s TeamBudget Suite to deliver an automated approach to their budgeting process. Key to the new system is the ability to compare actual costs vs. budget, track changes made at any point in the budgeting process, and rank projects.

The Salaries Module was of particular interest to Lac Ste. Anne. The module gives users the flexibility needed to deal with the complexity of salaries, contracts, and associated labor costs.

TeamBudget’s web-based solution will seamlessly integrate with their financial system, GreatPlains, and project management application, WorkTech, providing them with a powerful tool to address their budgeting needs.

The Town of Taber has made the move to an automated budget system, with the purchase of Questica’s TeamBudget Suite.

The Town previously used Excel spreadsheets to manage Capital and Operating budgets. This made it difficult to measure Actual Costs vs. Budgets, and limited their reporting capabilities.

With the purchase of TeamBudget Suite, they will be able to centralize their budgeting process, complete a multi-year Operating budget, and improve reporting by leveraging TeamBudget’s new powerful Ad-hoc reporting tool.

Questica Inc. and Bellamy Software, a division of Sylogist Ltd. (TSX-V:SYZ), today announce that they have entered into a long term agreement that will provide municipalities and school boards with a leading web-based solution to manage their operating and capital forecasting and budgeting planning process.

Forsyth County had a strong need for an operating and especially salaries solution, and was impressed with the features of TeamBudget Capital and TeamBudget Operating. Forsyth County is also pleased with the fact that Questica has experience integrating with their current financial package, GEMS, which will make the implementation even smoother.

The City of Lynnwood is excited to have a budgeting solution that allows users to enter budget requests into one solution while managing and tracking changes. Lynnwood uses the GEMS financial system, one of the many financial systems TeamBudget integrates with. Remote implementation and training will begin this week of TeamBudget Capital and TeamBudget Operating.

Along with the many benefits of TeamBudget Capital and TeamBudget Operating, Fort St. John was pleased that Questica could implement and train remotely to cut down their expenses. The City of Fort St. John uses Microsoft Dynamics, one of the many financial systems TeamBudget can integrate with.

The Town of Sudbury chose our web based TeamBudget Capital solution to eliminate the confusion and errors created with Excel spreadsheets. They were also impressed with the access to over 30 predesigned reports along with the option to customize reports. The Town of Sudbury decided to have TeamBudget Capital implemented remotely to save valuable dollars.

Questica has once again, through Veritest testing requirements, achieved Microsoft's highest partnership status for its TeamBudget applications. Questica has worked hard to achieve this status with its Web based .NET solutions.

Dennis Parass, Questica's Chairman, is featured in an article in the National Post along side Condoleezza Rice and Martha Stewart.

Dennis Parass, Chairman of Questica has received the 2005 Ontario Global Traders Gold Award in the Leadership category for the Central Ontario Region. The ceremony was held last week in Barrie, Ontario.

Dennis Parass, Chairman of Questica Inc. and President of Handling Specialty will be honored as an Ontario Global Traders Award Recipient for the Central Region on Thursday, April 6 at the Holiday Inn Hotel in Barrie, ON.

After a lengthy RFP search, the Region of Niagara has decided to purchase Questica’s TeamBudget Capital solution. The solution was determined the perfect fit for Niagara as it will streamline their budgeting process and allows for custom reporting. Questica will also be building a debentures/bond management module to assist the Region of Niagara in tracking their borrowing and bond repayments.

Questica’s Chairman, Dennis Parass, has been interviewed in the March 2005 issue of Mechanical Engineering magazine. With over 36 years experience in the manufacturing industry, including 22 years specifically in custom design manufacturing, Dennis offers his thoughts on the software required by small-mid sized Engineer-to-Order manufacturers.