Marblehead — The district finance office told the school committee it is continuing work to migrate payroll and general ledger functions into the Munis system and to correct special-education accounting that will materially change reported local balances.

Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations Mike Piffling said the district is running payroll out of SoftRight while non-salary expenditures are being processed in Munis during a phased transition. "Once we're in Munis, I can delete those purchase orders," Piffling said, describing manual encumbrances the office created to cover payroll across the migration.

Piffling told the committee that a set of special-education tuition charges had been charged to the local budget because circuit-breaker accounts had not been set up in Munis at the time the report was generated. "That has been rectified as of this week," he said, and the district will move roughly $1,700,000 of expenses into circuit-breaker accounts. He said that reallocation will restore about $1 million to the local special-education budget line once the adjustments post.

He listed categories not yet encumbered (lead teacher stipends, custodial overtime, unemployment costs, some athletic and medical salaries, and the 403(b) match) and cautioned the committee that salary is the largest portion of district expense (about 76%). He also noted that the special-education out-of-district expenditures on the report were "just under $700,000 over budget" before the circuit-breaker correction.

Piffling said staff are running parallel payrolls and running simulations to identify potential errors; training materials for employees and supervisors will be available in English and Spanish and will include video and written guidance. He said the district will schedule an all-staff Munis webinar in November and post the recording for staff who cannot attend.

Committee members asked for monthly follow-up and for more detail on big buckets of unexpended funds; Piffling said he will review the report and report back. The committee did not take any immediate spending actions at the meeting.

Provenance: Financial report and Q&A presented by Mike Piffling during the district financial activities agenda item (transcript segment beginning 11:33).