Case Study: City of Surprise, Arizona achieves major time savings and streamlined HR & payroll with Tyler Technologies’ Munis

How Munis enabled this city to work smarter, not harder

The City of Surprise, Arizona (population ~130,000; ~1,200 employees) struggled with time-consuming, error-prone paper processes: hundreds of paper timecards each pay period, Word-based Personnel Action Forms, no pending-change workflow, and manual benefit updates across multiple carrier portals. These manual tasks made payroll and HR processing slow, costly, and vulnerable to data entry mistakes—especially during open enrollment.

After implementing Munis in 2016, the city adopted Munis Employee Self Service for time entry and benefits and configured 834 Enrollment Files to automatically send changes to carriers. The result: payroll no longer keys paper timesheets, auditing and accuracy improved, open enrollment participation hit 94% while staff needed fell from 10 to 3, and annual HR processing time for new hires and qualifying events dropped from ~3,500 to ~1,700 hours—freeing staff for strategic work.

City of Surprise, Arizona

Chris Edwards

Human Resources Information Systems Analyst