Tehama County Department of Education

The Challenge:

The Tehama DOE is responsible for managing the financial needs of the county’s schools. As you can imagine, handling all those processes for so many different districts is complex and time-consuming. It takes meticulous attention to detail and intense focus.

The paperwork required to complete payroll for each pay period was especially challenging. Hourly employees used paper time sheets to record absences and hours worked. This practice generated mountains of paper, occasionally leading to misplaced, incomplete, or lost records. Employees often didn’t know their leave balances and had to track down that information from the payroll staff. It wasn’t efficient for the team responsible for completing payroll each pay period — nor was it the best way to support employees.

The Results:

The real workhorse at Tehama is Frontline California ERP. If you ask Lourie what the most essential functions of Frontline California ERP are, her response is, “Everything! It’s our complete financial system.”

It does all the manual work behind the scenes so that we don’t have to worry about it.”

It’s easy to see why the Business Office team appreciates Frontline California ERP so much.

• Manual calculations are no longer needed
• Increased accuracy
• Employees are paid correctly
• Eliminates human errors
• Reduces workload
• Saves the cost of hiring more staff to do the work manually

Absence Management has been a valuable companion to Frontline California ERP. Lourie and Johnna counted how many additional staff members they might need to hire to do the work the two Frontline systems do. They realized they would need at least two more positions to get the job done.

Taking tasks from daunting to done

COVID created new challenges for Tehama, among them a long list of options for leave requirements. Based on funding sources, reporting could be tricky. The business office staff had to adjust for each alternative, creating new leave types to fit the circumstances.

The import/export process between Absence Management and Frontline California ERP kept all that data organized and current. Employees could access their records from home. Documents like pay stubs, W2s, and salary notifications were sent through the same ERP portal. Even better, the Frontline Absence Management Mobile App made employee absence reporting and leave requests easily accessible for all staff who were working remotely.

We sent notifications out through the ERP portal for the new school year. That really helped us, especially through COVID when we had no contact, we had no way of physically giving something to someone.”

Keeping an eye on time — past, present, and future

Keeping a close watch on employee attendance is not just fiscally responsible. It also serves as a way to remind teachers and staff how important they are, and how much their students rely on them.

Together, Frontline California ERP and Absence Management provide so much more visibility than the old paper-based procedures ever could. No longer will someone’s leave request get lost in the shuffle — everything is visible in real-time.

HR can easily track employee absences to see:

• How much leave has been used.
• Reasons for absences.
• Which conferences an employee will attend in the future.

Supervisors know where their people are:

• Is a staff member on campus or absent?
• Why are they absent? Is a sub needed?
• Check in with those whose leave time is running out before it does.

We use it for looking forward, backward, and for the present. We use it in real-time.”

It takes two to tango

Any new technology takes time to master. When Frontline was first implemented at Tehama, the client success team provided strong support. Now that DOE users have the hang of it, they find an online chat with support staff is usually all they need when they have questions.

At times, they have to work more closely together as partners. For example, when the Affordable Care Act was passed several years ago, the DOE needed to set up Frontline California ERP to calculate and report employee benefits correctly. Frontline’s client success team helped them navigate the complex process. Lourie and her staff appreciated the guidance they received from the support team to get the system up and running properly. At the same time, the Tehama team made suggestions for adjustments that would be needed in the future to accommodate ACA’s procedural changes.

We couldn’t have done it without them. And Frontline needed us. We tend to be a county that looks ahead, big picture. We don’t wait until the last minute to try and dig into something.”

Exchanging ideas and keeping in close contact have strengthened the Tehama DOE and Frontline partnership. Lourie and Johnna appreciate how Frontline stays engaged with the IRS and the state on regulatory changes. The Frontline client success team sends their representatives to meetings, and they pay attention to new laws that are coming out. Frontline isn’t waiting for clients to realize they need something — they plan ahead.

Frontline is on the ball. They have everybody get in there and test so that they can help get the program up and running. When it goes into implementation, Frontline California ERP is ready to go.”