Hunting For Savings in Your Budget: Episode One

Episode 1: Unraveling Your Process

District leaders like you are always on a treasure hunt – a hunt for more time and more money. Just like in the movies where the hero must solve riddles, cross raging rivers, even move mountains, you go through hoops to find that extra money, so you can achieve your vision. You know that it’s worth the while because what you find at the end of it all is rewarding.

Your first challenge is to recognize the processes you have in place and note the existing outcomes. This allows you to unravel areas for savings – both in time and money. This is no easy task, you will have to step away from your pressing to-do list and reflect on the big picture. This might sound obvious, but it’s surprising how infrequently we do this. To kick off this adventure, see if you can answer the following questions.  If you can’t, find the person that can!

• How long does it take to onboard a new employee or to process a personnel action form?
• Have you been penalized due to errors or delays?
• How are you tracking extra duty or overtime hours? Are you consistently over budget?
• Is there a bottleneck for requests to travel, attend training, or time-off? How are these impacting your budget?
• How long does it take to prepare for an audit? How confident are you that your data is correct?

Know that there are others before you that have found their hidden savings. Burbank Unified School District, for example, found $2.3 million in overhead and overtime savings in just two years. During their discovery phase, they found that working in multiple data systems — a county payroll system, two FileMakerPro databases, two Access databases, and an HR system was a time sink.  Double entry was a common practice, creating room for error and certainly not an efficient practice. The goal was to consolidate and integrate these processes and data in order to realize time and financial savings.

In this series we will help you hunt for savings, leaving no process overlooked or file unopened. We will share tips, stories and best practices from the real experts in the field — you. Stay tuned!

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