Clyde, OH Plans for Success with OpenGov Budgeting & Planning
EINPresswire.com / -- After years of manually managing budgets in Excel, which slowed efficiency and complicated union negotiations, the City of Clyde's leadership sought a modern solution to streamline their financial operations. They chose OpenGov, a trusted leader in cloud-based government software, for its ability to centralize data, enhance collaboration, and provide exceptional customer support.
City staff needed a budgeting solution that would serve as a single source of truth while holding department heads accountable for submitting accurate financial proposals on time. OpenGov Budgeting & Planning stood out for its adaptability, ability to streamline workflows, and capacity to improve collaboration across departments.
With OpenGov Budgeting & Planning, City officials anticipate a more transparent and efficient budgeting process. The new system is expected to improve accuracy in budget proposals, ensuring greater accountability while reducing administrative bottlenecks. Additionally, OpenGov's intuitive platform and high user adoption will empower staff to make data-driven decisions with confidence, supporting long-term financial sustainability.
The City of Clyde joins more than 2,000 public sector organizations leveraging OpenGov to revolutionize work processes with cloud-based software designed specifically for the needs of government.
About OpenGov
OpenGov is the leader in modern cloud software for cities, counties, state agencies, and special districts. With a mission to power a more effective and accountable government, OpenGov serves more than 2,000 public sector leaders and their organizations. OpenGov is built exclusively for the unique budgeting and planning, accounting, permitting and licensing, procurement, asset management, and tax and revenue needs of the public sector. The OpenGov Cloud empowers organizations to operate more efficiently, adapt to change, and strengthen trust with the communities they serve. Learn more or request a demo at opengov.com.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Tom's Guide
a day ago
- Tom's Guide
These are the 10 prompts in DeepSeek to help you create a budget
Creating a home budget doesn't have to always involve an Excel spreadsheet and coffee to keep you awake during the process. Instead, AI bots can guide you through a budget and make it much easier to track your income and expenses. I should know — I avoid the topic as much as possible. For years, I calculated most of my expenses in my head and hoped it all worked out. Roughly about 10 years ago, I started relying on apps like Mint to help me and even the tools provided by my bank. Recently, I tried using DeepSeek to guide me through the process. It's amazing how these 10 prompts can help you figure out where all of the money is going. Here are the best ones to try. Before diving into the details of a home budget, you can start by asking DeepSeek which home budget works best for you. Fortunately, this prompt provides a wealth of information, no pun intended. DeepSeek presents several options for home budgets including the popular Zero-Based Budget' that helps you track income, expenses and savings down to the last dollar. In that home budget, you put money into savings first, then allocate money to other things. This prompt really narrows things down, because it means you'll need to budget more aggressively. DeepSeek recommends several budgets but two of them are worth calling out. The first one is a percentage system called an Aggressive Savings plan. 50% goes to needs, 20% to savings, 10% to debt, and 20% to wants. DeepSeek also recommended the zero-based budget, which prioritizes savings even more — but maybe a little too much for me. I decided to try the Aggressive Savings plan because it looked practical and achievable to me. I was impressed with all of the detail DeepSeek provides here, listing a full table of expenditures with suggestions for how much to set aside for groceries, gas, and credit card debt. Using this budget means I could save $192 per week — reaching my $10,000 per year goal. So far the prompts and suggestions have all been generic — they could apply to anyone. I decided to make it more personal. I asked about customizing for my income level and DeepSeek then guided me through the entire budget process. The AI asked for my annual income and expenses including car payments and student loans. DeepSeek also asked where I sometimes slip up — say, by overpaying for Uber Eats. I inputted all of this info. (Truth be told — I made up some details. I am not yet comfortable adding actual data to an AI bot yet.) I noticed my final home budget required saving about $833 per month, which seemed a little high. I asked DeepSeek to adjust my budget to save a little less, and suddenly it all seemed more practical. I was allocating more money to eating out and gas/groceries without having to sacrifice so many things that I'd end up failing. I was happy with the results so far. I knew at this point that a home budget would not be useful if it was just contained within a chatbot. I asked DeepSeek to generate an Excel file and was a little surprised when it generated a CSV file instead. (I'm sure there are copyright issues with providing an Excel file.) No matter — I imported the file into Google Sheets using the comma-separated values. A home budget is not just about the numbers and creating a spreadsheet. What works the best is when you have an action plan each month that helps you adhere to the budget. I was surprised, though, when DeepSeek offered some unusual suggestions to help. The bot said I could consider doing a side gig to help generate more income, which seemed smart. Another surprise is that the bot suggested a temporary pause on some charitable donations. Mint is a popular home finance app and I've used it many times. Ironically, I had never actually important a spreadsheet before and DeepSeek noted that is not even possible. Instead, the chatbot suggested inputting all of the info manually, which seemed clunky. And guess what? The bot actually used that word. DeepSeek said 'If this feels clunky…' to try some competing apps that do support imports. DeepSeek also offered to show screenshots of Mint to help me see where to input the budget info. This process took several minutes, though. And, they were not real screenshots — instead, DeepSeek created text-based guidelines. I asked DeepSeek for more guidance, and the bot covered quite a few practical tips for managing my money — one involved using a cash-based budget where you put money into envelopes for different spending categories. Another tip was to wait 24 hours before spending X amount of money (say $5) if it is an impulse buy. Lastly, I asked DeepSeek to save my home budget and all of the tips. It turns out, DeepSeek can't save anything as a text file, so the bot suggested I copy all of the text and paste it into Google Docs or another word processor. That worked just fine for me! Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips.
Travel Weekly
2 days ago
- Travel Weekly
Global Travel Collection rolls out AI-powered platform
Global Travel Collection (GTC), Internova Travel Group's luxury arm, has introduced Atlas, an AI-powered platform that GTC estimates will save its 1,500 advisors more than 1.5 million hours of travel-planning time annually. "This is just the beginning," GTC president Angie Licea said in a release. "Atlas proves that AI can empower, not replace, human expertise." Atlas was developed alongside Microsoft using its Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio. The generative AI platform offers advisors a place where travel content is centralized and accessible via natural language prompts. It has integrated GTC's airline, hotel, entertainment and corporate travel systems. Speedy … and secure Advisors can query Atlas and obtain answers "in seconds," GTC said, "significantly speeding up the trip-planning process." GTC estimates Atlas will save advisors three hours of planning time per itinerary. Casey Soto, GTC's senior director of product management, said the tool will enable advisors to streamline workflows and enhance the service they offer clients. GTC advisor David Waldes, based in New York, has found that to be true. "What used to take 10 to 15 minutes per query now takes seconds," Waldes said. "Atlas spiders through our systems and delivers insights instantly." It's also secure, said Mark Munley, GTC's senior vice president and chief information officer. "The Microsoft ecosystem provides the enterprise-grade security and compliance we need, including built-in GDPR and PCI support, giving us confidence to scale," Munley said. GTC is looking to add monetization opportunities into Atlas, the host agency said. That includes featuring preferred partners within the platform.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Microsoft 365
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing. Chances are that you already use and appreciate the power of Microsoft 365. The behemoth of personal expertly facilitates collaborative work, packs tons of class-leading features, and benefits from regular (and substantial) updates. We especially appreciate the flexibility to work across desktop, mobile, and web versions of its apps. The complexity of the suite's feature set can be overwhelming, and some Copilot AI features are more annoying than useful, but Microsoft 365 still easily earns our Editors' Choice award because of its reliable performance and unbeatable functionality across apps. If you prefer not to pay for continuous updates, however, you should check out the standalone version of the suite, Office 2024, another Editors' Choice winner. Microsoft 365 is the latest name for the suite of apps that includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more. Microsoft formerly called it Microsoft Office and then Office 365. The company also now maintains an app for desktop, mobile, and web platforms called Microsoft 365 Copilot (formerly Microsoft 365). On all platforms, it provides links to the appropriate versions of the suite apps and lets you ask the Copilot AI assistant questions. Microsoft 365 maintains native apps for every major platform except Linux. Subscription-locked desktop apps are available for macOS and Windows, and you can download free mobile apps for Android, iOS, and iPadOS. Free, web-based versions of the apps allow you to use them practically anywhere, including on Linux. Simply signing up for a Microsoft account gets you 5GB of free storage and access to web and mobile versions of Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. A Microsoft 365 Basic subscription ($19.99 per year) gets you 100GB of OneDrive storage and an ad-free version of Outlook on the web. However, to unlock Microsoft 365's best capabilities, you need to pay more. The Microsoft 365 Personal tier ($99.99 per year) allows a single person to use desktop versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook (you get an email address as part of the subscription), OneNote, and Word on up to five supported devices. This plan also includes 1TB of OneDrive storage, Copilot AI features across the apps, the Microsoft Defender antivirus app, more AI credits for the AI-based Designer app, and premium Clipchamp and features. The more economical Microsoft 365 Family plan ($129.99 for up to six people) unlocks those same features for each person. Both of those rates increased by $30 when Microsoft added Copilot features, much to the dismay of many AI-averse subscribers. The good news is that you can optionally downgrade to the cheaper Microsoft 365 Standard tier ($69.99 per year for individuals, $99.99 for families) if you are an existing subscriber and don't want Copilot features. Microsoft 365 has a business version (starting at $4.75 per user per month, billed annually) and the aforementioned standalone version (starting at $149.99), while college and education students can get the Personal version with Copilot for half off ($59.88 per year). It is a fast-evolving suite that adds new features and interface tweaks every few weeks, so I strongly recommend one of the subscription options. The most popular competitors are the Google Docs Editors (a Gen Z favorite). Available as cloud-connected mobile and web apps, they make collaboration especially easy and bundle more storage (15GB) than Microsoft does at the free level. Apple users might still prefer the suite of Keynotes, Numbers, and Pages. They work on all Apple devices, as well as on the web (with real-time collaboration). Just know that you need to export documents in universal formats to share them broadly. The open-source LibreOffice might appeal for legal reasons, though its desktop-only apps aren't as capable as Microsoft 365's. Other more affordable work-alike desktop apps include ($129.95 for a perpetual license or starting at $29.90 per year) and Kingsoft WPS Office (free for a limited version or starting at $35.99 per year). Only one major office suite doesn't try to imitate Microsoft: Corel WordPerfect (starting at $99.99 for a perpetual license). It uniquely uses a reveal-codes screen that lets you see and completely control and clean up your document's exact formatting. If you purely care about writing text, check out our roundup of the (including some distraction-free options). Below, I detail my experiences with each of the core Microsoft 365 apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. You likely already know these apps inside out, so I concentrate on new features and some (admittedly particular) issues. To not leave you in suspense, these are all still the preeminent apps of their type. Yes, annoyances and occasional instability are present, but the apps' benefits far outweigh their downsides. Word is a unique blend of effortless power and occasional frustrations that you have probably learned to live with because it's the only practical choice. It might just be among the most feature-rich apps ever; aside from complex controls over every aspect of document formatting, it offers drawing tools and even integrates Microsoft's translation and research services. Almost all the features in the Windows version of Word are available for the macOS version, too, except the myriad keyboard shortcuts that ease navigation. Word continues to gradually shed its old-style dialog boxes in favor of modern, multi-pane interfaces. For example, you can now use a spacious Navigation pane to search for text instead of the cramped old Find dialog. An Editor pane (formerly the Proofing pane) also replaces the old spell-check dialog, too. If you use a mouse, Word's multiple-pane interface works beautifully. But if you don't want to move your fingers from the keyboard, getting to these panes quickly is a challenge. Pressing the F6 key lets you jump to one of Word's panes from the editing screen or ribbon, but these panes still don't respond to many traditional keyboard shortcuts, such as Alt + Down to open a drop-down menu. Another recent controversial change is the removal of Track Changes balloons in the left margin. If all you need to do is type a report or a letter, then Word's ribbon interface gives you easy access to every feature you need. But if you want to customize formatting or use advanced features like fields that contain variables—which you can change throughout a document with a single command—you might need to customize your keyboard or ribbon with components Word doesn't usually display. Beginners can get started by choosing among hundreds of elegant, downloadable template designs directly from the app's New menu. If you want to concentrate on the text you're writing, a distraction-free Focus mode is available. Just click the Focus button on the toolbar (you might need to enable it from the right-click toolbar) to launch a full-screen editing mode with just a scrollbar and no visible menus. At the same time, advanced users can configure the interface to show a cornucopia of detail. Right-click on the status bar at the foot of Word's window to get an idea of the dozens of things it can tell you about your document. If you haven't spent half a lifetime learning Word, some behaviors might frustrate you. For example, Word adds a horizontal line at the foot of a paragraph if you type a few too many dashes by default, and then doesn't let you easily delete it (you need to use the border drop-down menu in the Paragraph section of the Home tab to remove it). And if you want to change the length of the separator line between text and footnotes, you might not easily guess that you can do so only by switching from the default Page view into Draft view and accessing the drop-down menu in the lower pane of that window. You can stop Word from adding border lines—and other things it does automatically, such as creating numbered lists—by customizing its auto-format features. However, you need to navigate through multiple dialog boxes to find all the options, some of which are inconvenient to manage. For example, you can tell Word not to flag grammar issues as you type, but you can't turn off the distracting grammar-checking in the Editor pane without turning off dozens of individual options, one by one. To help you find features and support topics, Word (and other Microsoft 365 apps) includes a prominent search field in its title bar. For instance, if you can't remember that you need to open the Ribbon menu's Insert tab to edit headers and footers, simply type Insert Header, and Word will bring up the relevant menu. However, this dialog won't tell you where to look on the ribbon for the feature in question or always bring up the correct menu. For example, if you search for the Master Document feature, which lets you build a large document from separately editable chapters, Word takes you to a completely different feature for displaying multiple pages in a single window. The search tool finds the Master Document feature only if you find it first; changing the View setting from Print Layout to Outline causes the Ribbon to show the Master Document menu. Word also sometimes makes formatting errors. For example, while I was working on this review, I also worked on another document containing many book titles. Word suddenly decided to italicize everything in two pages in the middle of the document, not just the book titles. Restoring the correct formatting took more than an hour. The Master Document feature is notoriously unstable, sometimes losing track of which parts of the document belong in the Master Document itself. Unless you're a Word wizard, you might not know that Word stores the formatting of the current paragraph inside the paragraph mark at the end of it—you can't even see this mark until you click the Show/Hide button (which looks like a paragraph mark) on the Home tab. If you delete the invisible paragraph mark between two paragraphs (for example, by backspacing across a paragraph break), the format of one paragraph might change to match the format of the other. I've wasted many hours restoring formatting that Word changed without warning. Word's layout options are sometimes a pain. If you want to change page margins in the middle of a document, you have to create a new section. Doing so, however, disrupts any automatic footnote and endnote numbering. Almost every other modern word processor imitates Word's nonsensical layout rules, except for WordPerfect, which lets you change margins anywhere in a document without affecting anything else. If you or your organization still has Word files from 20 or more years ago, Word now refuses to open them. Why? Because Word's old file formats supported macros that run automatically and can potentially damage your system. Other word processors, such as LibreOffice and WordPerfect, can safely open and import these old documents because they can't run these macros at all. You can persuade Word to open some but not all old documents by changing settings in the Trust Center on the Options menu. Word has the most full-featured programming language support of any word processor, the same Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) as in Excel and PowerPoint. It's not an easy language to grasp, but anyone can learn the basics by recording a macro and then studying the resulting code in Word's built-in Visual Basic editor. LibreOffice and Corel WordPerfect also have powerful macro languages, but Word's is so universal that you can quickly find help online. Mac users can alternatively use the easy-to-learn AppleScript scripting language to automate Word. Excel continues to outclass every other spreadsheet app in terms of speed and power, with the latest version further widening the gap. Google Sheets is almost on par in terms of processing speed, but it lacks a desktop app and isn't as capable. LibreOffice Calc is the best desktop-based rival to Excel, but it's slower and far less feature-rich. Apple's Numbers stands out for its ability to create graphics-rich, easy-to-manage worksheets, but it isn't as powerful or suitable for advanced corporate or financial use. Unlike Word, Excel is low on frustrations and always easy to navigate. It's even beginning to pick up some of the graphics-based features of Apple's Numbers. Excel does have automated formatting and layout features like Word, but these work reliably with the structured data that goes into an Excel worksheet (as opposed to the free-form prose you type into Word). I especially like Excel's Power Query feature, which saves hours of effort by converting raw data from web-based tables or comma-separated data files into a lucidly formatted Excel worksheet, complete with sorting buttons at the top of each column. The same feature exists in both the Windows and macOS versions, but looks better in the latter. Unfortunately, the macOS edition tends to get new features long after the Windows and web-based versions. For example, the Check Performance feature that can clear unused metadata and other unnecessary details isn't in the Mac version yet. But at least it now has the nifty Flash Fill feature that makes it easy to, for example, create a column of full names from separate columns of first names and last names. Among the hottest new features in Excel is a spacious Python Editor pane for modifying any Python code that you enter into cells in your worksheet. You can test your code here before entering it into your worksheet, and even see how it executes, cell by cell, so you can easily debug any problems. If you're ready to try out Python in Excel, you can find it in the Formula tab of the Ribbon or simply press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F2. Another impressive feature is the ingenious XLOOKUP function that makes it simple to display a value from a large array of data. For example, you might have a column that lists stock symbols and another that lists their current prices. You can then type in a stock symbol somewhere else in your worksheet and assign another cell to display the price of said stock. (You use the XLOOKUP formula in the second cell.) A dynamic array feature lets you create a formula in the first cell of a table that returns data from all the rows in the table, no matter how many rows it contains. That way, you don't have to know in advance how many rows your table will contain. This is an extension of the aforementioned Flash Fill feature. Finally, the app allows you to use a picture as the content of a cell (rather than having it float over the spreadsheet) so that it moves with its row or column of data. You can import pictures from a web address, and the cell's contents will update if the picture on the web changes. Excel now works as well on the web as Google Sheets. It lets you share just part of a workbook, such as a range, table, or chart. Collaborators can edit the data in these specific areas without the ability to share or modify anything else. This is an extension of an earlier feature that let you create a custom sheet view for specific people that shows only what you wanted them to see. Additionally, if you use Microsoft Forms to gather data, Excel can automatically update a live worksheet whenever someone submits a form. Traditional presentations never go out of style, no matter how many people dislike them. PowerPoint keeps adding innovations that make presentations easier to create and watch. A new Presenter Coach feature tells you to summarize your slides instead of simply reading them and alerts you to filler words like 'um.' A Record tab in the ribbon creates a video of you narrating your presentation and lets you read your text in a teleprompter tab at the top of the screen, so you don't have to keep looking down to read what you want to say. The Review tab includes a Check Accessibility function that allows you to test whether your slides have all the information that users who rely on screen-reading software need. PowerPoint's ease of use extends to its ability to add a live camera feed to all slides without inserting the feed into each slide individually. Earlier, it added a feature that records your freehand inking for playback later. If you're creating traditional presentations in Windows, PowerPoint is your only serious choice. Keynote is similarly superb for creating elegant slide decks from an Apple device. But if you're creating something for the web, consider an innovative alternative like , which creates non-linear presentations in which you zoom in and out of a large canvas. The complicated Outlook you know and probably don't love is finally destined for the recycle bin. Microsoft's new Outlook app (see the image below), available as part of Microsoft 365 or from the Microsoft Store for free, also replaces the old default Mail and Calendar apps on Windows. The revised email app does much of what the outgoing one did, but has a refreshingly simpler interface (though you can still switch back to the previous version as of publishing). Many Outlook alternatives are available. Thunderbird for Windows and Mac is free and has the most powerful search features of any mail client. Apple Mail works especially seamlessly within Apple's ecosystem. And of course, Gmail is available on the web and mobile. The latter version is uniquely easy to use and flexible, though the Outlook mobile app is also compact, elegant, and fast. The latest version of Outlook adds S/MIME encryption and lets you manage .PST files from the older app. If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, Outlook now checks your spelling and grammar in an Editor pane like in Word. However, the translation features from the older Windows version of Outlook aren't available yet. A sidebar in the new Outlook app with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneDrive icons confusingly opens the web versions of the app, which might not even have the files you're looking for. Issues like this mean it still needs more fine-tuning before it can fully replace its predecessor, but it does continue to improve rapidly. The biggest new changes in the Microsoft 365 apps are the Copilot AI features. I especially like Copilot's presence in Excel, where it suggests useful ways of graphing data that would otherwise require some expert programming. Its capabilities in Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word are less impressive, however, and I turned them off after testing. Like rival AI systems from Apple, Google, OpenAI, and others, Copilot is better at organizing existing data than generating new content. Ask it to create a year-to-year percentage change in Excel, and it gets the job done in a few seconds. Ask it to write a Word document about anything that involves human beings and their life or work, and it produces wordy, overenthusiastic prose. At the time of testing, it often 'hallucinated,' meaning it invented facts that vaguely resembled the reality I asked about. If you're tempted to use it, make sure to check everything it says. I don't advise using Copilot to write an email for you in Outlook. It tends to open a message with 'I hope this message finds you well,' a phrase that tends to signal that you used AI to write the message. Every message I asked it to write used too many words to say what a real human being could have said in just a few. Unless you really want Copilot, you should go to the Options menu in Microsoft 365 apps and turn it off. If you don't, Word will open new documents with a prompt to use Copilot, and the Copilot icon will appear in the margin every time you start a new paragraph. If you don't intend to use these features at all and are eligible, you should downgrade to the aforementioned, cheaper, and Copilot-free Microsoft 365 Standard subscription.
