District finance software purchase is a neccessary, planned expense

The School District is currently using an accounting software called Comprehensive Information Management for Schools or CIMS.

The school has been using this software since the 1980s. It is a DOS-based software, very sophisticated for its time, but unfortunately, has not evolved with the times.  

There currently are three schools in Montana using CIMS: Libby,  Havre and Livingston.  Havre is in the process of converting to Black Mountain software and Livingston is intending on switching but hasn’t decided to which software.  

That would leave only our district using CIMS, which is a concern to me.

About five years ago, CIMS was bought out by a company called Weidenhammer. Weidenhammer also has its own accounting software called Alio. Weidenhammer is aggressively encouraging CIMS users to switch to their product Alio. Weidenhammer has told me while they will support CIMS for now, they will not put any efforts into advancing the program.  

My concern is that Weidenhammer is going to eventually drop CIMS, which would force us to change software.

The Office of Public Instruction is mandating a new terms-of-employment-data =-reporting program as part of the Growth and Enhancement of Montana Students (GEMS)  data system, it will require all school districts to provide more detailed data concerning employees, salary, etc.  

Our current system can write a supplement program that will extract that data and upload it into the new OPI GEMS for $8,000.  This cost was going to be shared by the three schools currently using CIMS. 

Now, with Harve and Livingston changing, that would leave our district with the total cost. 

With all these factors considered,  I have discussed with Mr. Maki, that now may be the time to be proactive and make a change before we are forced to change and not be prepared, and before we pay $8,000 for a program update that may not benefit us in the future.   

Knowing that CIMS is an older software, and anticipating that this could happen, the district had set aside business office technology monies a few years ago.  These monies are comprised of mostly E-Rate monies and some saved indirect cost monies.

I have investigated and watched demos for Alio. It seems to be a very capable software. My concerns are no other schools in Montana are using Alio and its user friendliness.

My choice would be for Black Mountain Accounting software.  So, why Black Mountain?

More than 120 Montana school districts are currently using Black Mountain, and it comes highly recommended.

Our County Treasurer uses Black Mountain software. Considering the treasurer filters all school district monies, our systems would work together, saving input and work time on both our ends.

Black Mountain is already set up to handle all state reporting including the new office of public instruction GEMS. 

State reporting for TRS, PERS, unemployment, workers comp could automatically upload.  Currently, we have to manually format and upload data, this in itself would be a large time-saver.

Changing any software is a big deal, but I truly feel this is a wise decision for the District and Business Office.

(Leslie Forester is buiness manager of the Libby school district.)