An annual budget book is more than a collection of financial reports that your government agency has spent many hours collecting and putting together. Although it’s a mandatory reporting component to the yearly budget, it’s also an opportunity to showcase to citizens and stakeholders how hard your government has worked on their behalf – the tough decisions made and the success stories to be celebrated. What is more, your budget book communicates your strategic plans and goals for the community, the programs and services that achieve those goals, what it will cost to run those programs and services, and where the money might come from.
Due to its significance, your government agency must ensure the information contained in your budget book is easy for citizens to understand and clearly captures what you are trying to achieve. Since there isn’t a mandatory format for budget documents, most governments prepare their budget book to their own preferences. Still, there is a method you may not have considered that can improve your budgeting process and possibly win your organization a prestigious award.
The Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) introduced the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award Program in 1984 to “encourage and assist state and local governments in preparing budget documents of the very highest quality that reflect both the guidelines established by the National Advisory Council on State and Local Budgeting and the GFOA’s best practices on budgeting”. .” The award provides an independent review and critique of a government’s budget book with the expectation that participating governments will focus on continuously improving their budgeting process and submit to the award every year. The criteria have evolved to keep up with new trends, with the latest revision being published in 2021. Hundreds of local governments in the U.S. and Canada take part every year for the opportunity to be recognized for producing an outstanding budget book.
The GFOA award program criteria
If your government agency wants to prepare an exceptional budget book, the GFOA provides a number of best practices to help you prepare budget documents to improve communication and transparency with citizens. But to go one step further, your organization can follow the GFOA’s criteria for submitting a budget book to the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award Program. The criteria encompass GFOA’s best practices for strategically developing a budget and a framework for creating a budget book (online or print) of the highest quality.
The criteria are based on the four essential purposes of the budget:
Policy document
The budget book identifies your agency’s financial goals and objectives, and the policies that will lead to their successful achievement.
Financial plan
The budget book outlines your agency’s current financial state and describes assumptions and forecasts where the organization is going based on those assumptions.
Operations guide
The budget book describes current operations for programs and services, measuring their efficiency and effectiveness.
Communications tool
The budget book shares your agency’s challenges, priorities, goals and objectives.
Even if your organization doesn’t feel ready to submit a budget book to the GFOA’s award program, there are several benefits to following their award criteria, including:
A practical method for improving the budget book
Your agency will have a clear set of goals and standards for creating a high-quality budget book.
Accountability and transparency
By following the award criteria, your agency will be creating a budget book focused on being more accountable and transparent to citizens and stakeholders.
Confirmation of good financial management
Since the criteria are based on the GFOA’s best practices, your agency can be confident they are following a best practices framework for budgeting.
Ready to share
Your agency will have a high-quality budget book (online or print) ready to share with citizens and stakeholders that will improve transparency and increase support for your budget.
A smarter approach to creating an online budget book
Before your organization can create an annual budget book that follows GFOA’s award criteria, you face the time-consuming task of assembling the budget. If your city, town or county is still budgeting with Excel, this may mean juggling multiple spreadsheets and dealing with not only potential errors, but version control issues. It may also mean countless hours of updating and manual checking, duplicating content, and consolidating data. There is also the descriptive narrative and graphics that are usually part of an annual budget book that needs to be collected from various departments and documents...
To streamline your budgeting process and budget book creation, your organization may consider moving to an online budget book solution that encourages collaboration and transparency to create a single source of budget data truth. Specifically, OpenBook is a transparency solution with an online budget book tool. This tool is a content management system that empowers finance professionals to create visually stunning and award-winning budget books that can be published online. Its user-friendly interface enables teams to collaborate on and easily create compliant, searchable, shareable, and aesthetically pleasing budget books.
Whether you have considered submitting your budget to the GFOA’s Distinguished Budget Presentation Award Program or not, the award submission criteria are a practical method for improving your budgeting process and creating a comprehensive annual budget book that results in an effective communication tool to share with citizens and stakeholders. Save your city, town or county the laborious task of managing multiple spreadsheets and compiling information using a data-driven tool like OpenBook’s budget book tool. OpenBook works seamlessly with Euna Budget by instantly populating data from Euna Budget into your online budget book. OpenBook’s online budget book tool provides a user-friendly and cost-effective solution for creating a GFOA award-compliant online budget book. Your government agency will be so proud of your new online budget book you may just reconsider sending in that award application.
OpenBook’s Budget Book Tool
OpenBook is our data visualization software that helps governments build transparency and trust by visually communicating their data. One of its most popular features is the Budget Book tool. This tool is an intuitive and collaborative content management system that empowers your government agency to create, collaborate, edit, approve, and publish an award-compliant online Budget Book without the headaches of timely spreadsheets/documents, version control issues, manual updates, and duplicating content such as charts, graphs, tables, and images.
To learn more about OpenBook, book a demo with one of our budget experts today!
