Russell City Council Approves Software Upgrade

The Russell City Council met Tuesday and approved the migration to Incode 10 software and authorized Mayor Jim Cross to sign the Software as a Service agreement.

The City has used Incode software since 1996 to track all financial, personnel, inventory, utility billing and cash functions according to City staff. The City currently uses Incode Version 9 and hosts its own server.

City staff has spent the past 12 months researching upgrading to Version 10 and moving to Software as a Service (SaaS) program where Tyler Technologies hosts the software on their servers and provides the City with its own virtual server. Tyler performs all maintenance on the server hardware, handles all software upgrades, ensures security, provides storage and maintains performance standards for this critical function software.

Version 9 will soon be end-of-life and no longer supported. Moving to Version 10 will improve internal efficiencies and allow the City to offer additional features to customers not offered by Version 9, which include mobile service orders, streamline bad debt collection, account audits day-by-day, emailing receipts, usage reports and utility bills to customers, open service orders displayed on the dashboard, total document storage useful for utility billing and human resources, and upgraded inventory module tying purchase orders and inventory together.

Migration services to the new system is a one time cost of $75,250. The shift to SaaS is estimated at three months and migration to Version 10 will begin in nine to 12 months. The annual license fees are $76,411.01, which includes the SaaS component.

Also Tuesday, the Council approved an ordinance making certain findings and expanding the hotel redevelopment district on South Fossil Street for the Holiday Inn Express hotel project.

The Council also continued to discuss the 2024 budget and heard budget requests from the Russell Public Library and Russell Recreation Commission. Proposed funding for the other outside entities that presented requests previously was also discussed.

Also Tuesday, the Council approved the purchase of replacement parts for the Water Plant A pre-sedimentation basin in an amount not to exceed $80,000.