Micro Force Case Study
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Case Study: District Council 37
District Council 37 is New York City’s largest municipal public employee union, providing services to 125,000 non-uniformed city employees. DC 37, like many other unions in the U.S., needed to comply with a new reporting requirement mandated by the Department of Labor to submit separate forms for each vendor who receives $5,000 in each of the LM-2 categories. They feared that the new requirements would require additional staffing.
Through special LM-2 meetings with local unions, The Department of Labor recommended the use of separate books. Mike Crudele of DC-37 knew that this would take an enormous amount of time. "We knew what we had to do, but had no means of doing it," said Mr. Crudele, adding that he "did not want to add additional work to the staff."In the fall of 2004, Micro Force and DC 37 were on a mission to find a solution for LM-2 that could integrate with their newly implemented Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) solution. They needed to work fast as the DOL had announced that changes would be going into effect immediately. It soon became apparent, according to Mr. Crudele, "that there was no system available that could provide an electronic LM-2 solution to integrate into the back office system." Many systems were available through accounts receivables, however, Mr. Crudele knew that it was imperative for the information to pull from the payable side. In the end, both parties agreed that the system would need to be built from scratch.
Micro Force worked closely with NYC union, DC 37, to develop a fully integrated solution to work with their Microsoft Great Plains financial system. This solution does not require additional work for a payable clerk. It permits LM-2 information to be updated after invoices have been processed. It includes a year-end report that can be sent in an electronic format with the “push of a button” eliminating the hundreds of hours of work that would otherwise be required.
To ensure that all of DC 37’s needs were met, Micro Force (working in conjunction with the DC 37 staff) decided that it was best to capture the schedule details in the payables module versus the general ledger. This way, the schedules could be determined at the time of vouchering and the LM-2 program could be written to report based on the payment. LM-2 groups were set up with specified percentage breakdowns. As payments were entered, the percentage default would automatically pull from Great Plains.
With over 1,000 GL accounts, DC 37 knew how much time they would be saving when all was said and done, to which Mr. Crudele commented that, "the payback will be enormous for DC 37 in the long run." From Micro Force’s efforts working with DC 37, Micro Force’s Quick LM-2 was born.
