Council hears system‑migration issues, audit backlog and bank‑reconciliation steps

City staff told the council that a 2023 change in financial software from Encode to FundView created account‑mapping problems and contributed to an audit backlog across multiple fiscal years.
"FundView have many, many account numbers and sort of cumbersome...the mapping made things incorrectly coded to the wrong buckets in some cases," the presenter said, adding that many payments were paid from the general fund instead of designated accounts and that some recurring automatic drafts were paid without invoices available to re‑code.
Staff said the city has hired an outside firm with audit and both Encode and FundView experience to help catch up the fiscal year 2022–2024 audits and to assist with bank reconciliations. The presenter said the city is maintaining a minimal Wells Fargo account while reconciling balances and will move tax deposits to a New First Bank tax account once reconciliations allow closure of the secondary account. "We have now hired a company that has auditing experience...they will help us with our past due audits and also with bank reconciliation moving forward," the staff member said.
Staff also described a vendor relationship issue with Assessment of Southwest, the company's tax services and documentation responsibilities, and said Waller County will assume tax collection duties; staff reported they are moving tax receipts into a designated tax account at New First Bank to correct prior routing of deposits into the general fund.
No formal motions or votes on corrective steps were recorded during the workshop; staff said they had discontinued many automatic payments to allow invoice retrieval and reclassification.