eMARS Upgrade

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eMARS Upgrade
Commonwealth of KentuckyEd Ross,
ControllerMarch 21, 2007
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eMARS Upgrade

• Upgrade from MARS client/server to eMARS web
  architecture
• Delivered on time and under budget of 11.5m
• Live July 2006 to support BFY 2007
• Statewide implementation including all agencies
• Supports over 4,500 users

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eMARS Upgrade

• Functional Scope

• General Ledger
• Budgeting
• Procurement eProcurement
• Accounts Payable
• Accounts Receivable
• Cost Accounting
• FHWA Billing

• Fixed Assets
• Travel
• Reporting warehouse
• Checkwriter
• Bank deposit and reconciliation
• ePayment

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Upgrade Innovations and Benefits

• Web browser interface
• Consolidated technical architecture
• Shared functionality to agencies without custom
  development
• Advantage CheckWriter

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Upgrade Innovations and Benefits

• Web browser interface
• Eliminated client-side software
• Eliminated software distribution and associated
  resource demands
• Consolidated technical architecture
• eMARS consolidated to a UNIX/Oracle platform
• Eliminated MARS combination of platforms

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Upgrade Innovations and Benefits

• Delivered shared functionality to agencies
  without custom development
• Advantage ePay
• Integrated, shared web-service for processing
  e-commerce transactions across the state
• Today 43 merchants or state agencies use ePay
• Provides a central, secure and auditable system
  for e-commerce without limiting the agencies
  capabilities for online business

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Upgrade Innovation and Benefits

• Advantage CheckWriter
• Provides high-volume disbursement and offset
  capabilities
• Checks or EFT are issued to payees based on input
  file. Payees do not necessarily have to be
  vendors
• Accounting entries are summarized prior to
  posting, providing huge processing efficiencies
• Agencies maintain control over the triggering of
  payments, e.g., child support payments

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Upgrade Innovation and Benefits

• Advantage CheckWriter (continued)
• All Commonwealth payments issued through eMARS
• Annual volume of about 10 million payments for
  over 15 billion
• 90 of payment through CheckWriter
• Provides offset capabilities for any payment due
  to enterprise nature

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Bank Reconciliation

• Daily file received from bank on cleared checks
• Job compares bank account, check number and check
  amount to ensure match between bank and
  accounting system
• Match problems remain on table ready for
  processing the subsequent day

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Bank Reconciliation

• Deposits are currently reconciled manually by
  assigning deposit ticket number and deposit date
• Because the bank frequently knows about EFT
  deposits prior to eMARS, this will continue to be
  reconciled manually

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Bank Reconciliation

• Daily process to adjust transactions that should
  have been recorded against another bank account
  both within the accounting system and at the bank
  through the generation of an ACH file

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Bank Reconciliation

• Activity at bank captured in 16 categories
• Cash activity in eMARS divided into 16 categories
  based on reporting criteria
• Activity at bank and in eMARS totaled on a daily
  basis, and any differences reconciled

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Bank Reconciliation

• Reconciliation process supported by a number of
  exception reports
• Outstanding Checks
• Checks cleared at bank, but not posted in eMARS
• Outstanding Deposits
• Deposits made at bank, but not posted in eMARS
• One-sided journal vouchers in eMARS

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ePayment Gateway

• Shared Services Solution
• Single Merchant Service Provider (MSP) contract
  for all of State Govt available to outside
  entities
• Transitioned a collection of disparate payment
  processing solutions into an infrastructure based
  online service supporting transactions end to end
• Enabled enterprise reconciliation control, audit
  trail, automated accounting system deposit
  update, and reporting capabilities for all online
  and swipe applications

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ePayment Gateway

• Shared Services Solution (continued)
• Lowered the barriers to entry for departmental
  web application development by using a common
  (proxy based web service) API to the MSP
• Virtual Terminal Website allows for ad-hoc
  transaction processing, refunds, reporting, and
  batch administration

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ePayments Gateway

• Swipe Transactions- Ave near 400,000 swipe
  transactions per year for 25M. These
  transactions have an automated deposit process
  into the accounting system. The Commerce Cabinet
  and primarily the State Parks system make up this
  amount.
• Deposit Concentration- the Parks system and other
  out of town entities use the Virtual Terminal to
  transfer local deposits to the concentration
  account each day at minimal cost.

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ePayment Gateway

• Web Transactions
• 2006 Dollars 333M and Count 344,000
• Seeing dollar volume in ACH and transaction
  counts in Credit Cards.
• Year to Year increases slowing

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Leading Organizations
Web Transactions
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Training

• Distance learning
• End user training provided through distance
  learning tools
• During project through combination of
  classrooms and remote virtual classrooms
• Ongoing through remote classrooms and recorded
  sessions available online
• Increased available of training to users while
  reducing the travel requirements
• Required fewer trainers