Case Study: Jackson County Water and Sewerage Authority finishes its budget a month early and streamlines budgeting and reporting with OpenGov

Jackson County, Georgia’s Water and Sewerage Authority Revolutionizes its Budget Process

Jackson County, Georgia’s Water and Sewerage Authority struggled with a slow, paper‑heavy budgeting process that relied on exporting financials to Excel, manually compiling department worksheets, and running quarterly management reports. Finance director Judy Smith spent hours reconciling data and preparing reports, which limited timely insight and hampered decision‑making and stakeholder communication.

The authority implemented OpenGov Budget Builder (integrated with OpenGov Intelligence), enabling fast import of prior-year budgets and actuals, a single online portal for departmental proposals, and an automatic audit trail. The change eliminated manual reconciliation, cut paper, reduced report preparation from a day to about 30 minutes, allowed monthly reporting, and helped the agency finish the annual budget a month early.

Jackson County Water and Sewerage Authority

Judy Smith

Finance Director