Kern County, California
Jordan Kaufman, Treasurer-Tax Collector for Kern County, a region of more than 900,000 residents in California’s oil and agriculturally rich Central Valley, spent years struggling with the use of an older accounting and reporting system. Despite its wide use in the industry, it seemingly caused more problems than it solved.
“It was PC based, and only a few computers in the department had it installed. It left us on a razor’s edge. If something happened, updates to servers or anything, the system would crash and there was only one person in their support department that knew everything. If you couldn’t get ahold of that person, it was a huge, huge issue,” Jordan says.
What’s worse, the system often left Jordan’s team with phantom securities. He describes it as a “security that might have been called earlier in the day and deleted, but somehow, someway, in the back of the system, it would stay there and pop up again.” A highly stressful event that left his department-whether it was a full security amount or just a coupon payment- unreconciled for the day.
“It would take hours of our investment officer’s time to search the system and figure out what the security was. We would have to do whatever it took and spend whatever time was necessary to make sure we found it. We reconcile our entire $6.5 billion portfolio to the penny every day, so we had no choice,” Jordan says.
Knowing they needed a different solution, Jordan and his team researched other systems that were available and found there weren’t any platforms to do the job unless they were willing to spend “five-to ten-fold more” on the product. Out of options, Jordan’s team turned to MaxQ Analytics, a portfolio analytics provider they already had a working relationship with, to see if they would be willing to work in tandem with their team to create what they needed. After two years and several iterations, MaxQ Analytics launched the Portfolio Evaluation, Accounting and Reporting system anchored by Kern County, as their first client.
“Because we were in the beta version, it was almost like a symbiotic relationship, trying to build a robust system that took any and every portfolio management situation we could think of into account,” Jordan says. “We would come up with things we would need, knowing that if we need it, any other county or municipality using a system is going to need it. Jason would build that out for us. It was a great relationship. I sort of felt like it was a partnership.”
Jordan’s team officially signed up with MaxQ Analytics in a “fairly simple” contract process, running it alongside their old system for about six months to ensure everything was working as expected. “The process was pretty straightforward about adding securities, calculating interest payments and that kind of thing.” So much so, it helped them find an accounting error by the old system of more than $100,000 that they were quickly able to adjust. And he chuckles, it’s “pretty user-friendly, because for me to be able to use it, it’s got to be simple.”
Jordan really likes that it’s web-based and is much more flexible and stable than other systems, with easy access to tech support. He says it allows them to “have confidence in the numbers that are critical to our operation.”
He and his team are looking forward to more. “We haven’t even fully used all the capabilities of MaxQ yet. We’re 100 percent satisfied and encourage anyone looking to replace their accounting and reporting system to give it a shot.”