Spotlight on $avings

Automated Budgeting Saves $8,600 Annually

- Meyersdale Area School District,

For Meyersdale Area School District, budget development used to be a labor intense, manual process that took three people in the central office as much as three weeks each - every year. Salary projections and benefit forecasting alone required multiple spreadsheets, and hours spent crunching numbers on the calculator. For a small district like Meyersdale, it is crucial to ensure that the tight budget stays in check.

According to Business Manager Laura Schardt, nothing slips by her, thanks to BudgetSense.

Almost all of the district's 250 employees are set up on salary schedules that can be projected and forecasted into the budget. This single effort created significant time savings for the district, and has added employees such as coaches and club advisors to the grid. Enthusiastically, Laura shared; “I can now do the budget myself in just a couple of days, because it’s all in the system."

This has created an annual labor savings of $8,600.

Laura encourages fellow business managers to take the plunge; “Budgeting gets easier every year, because you see better ways of doing it each time around, once you understand how it works.” She uses the filters and drill-downs within the budget to access information quickly and can easily answer questions from the board or the superintendent.

Even Laura’s Federal Projects Coordinator benefits. She can drill down into every budget line and see the dollars and people behind it in detail, which makes it easy to reallocate resources in response to funding changes. Overspending flags for purchasing and budget checking on new hire positions have helped to further streamline everyday business office functions. When asked how budgeting with BudgetSense compares to the way she used to do business, Laura smiles and says; “ I love it with BudgetSense. I do not ever want to change back.”

Laura is excited to utilize the budgeting flexibility of BudgetSense during her upcoming union negotiations and is looking at other areas within the system. Next on her list are document management and the WebSense workflow portal. These projects will improve the reach and service offerings Meyersdale can deliver, and will eliminate even more redundancies on their journey to peak performance.

Have you noticed significant savings that you would like to share in the $avings Spotlight? To share your story with the rest of the UniFund client community, contact us at $avings@unifundonline.com, so we can add your experiences to a future edition of uniNews.