How one Washington district transformed timesheet approvals and unlocked hidden capacity
Payroll might be the most critical process a district manages. When it works smoothly, staff get paid accurately and on time. When it breaks down, the consequences ripple across the entire organization—delayed payments, burned-out approvers, trust erosion, and budget overruns that compound with every pay cycle.
For years, many districts have settled for payroll processes that are "good enough." Paper timesheets move through approval chains. Manual entry creates bottlenecks. Staff wait for corrections. And business offices absorb the friction as just part of the job.
But as budgets tighten and staffing shortages intensify, the hidden costs of these workflows are becoming impossible to ignore.
The breaking point
Yakima School District in Washington faced a familiar challenge. Like many districts using Skyward for their ERP, the team knew their financial data lived in a powerful system. But getting timesheets into that system required manual processes that consumed hours of staff time every pay period.
Shari Chapman, Director of Payroll for Yakima School District, described the team's initial attempt at digitization. The district had piloted TrueTime for select employee groups, hoping to streamline the approval process. Instead, approving timesheets and converting them into worksheets for payment became time-consuming for payroll staff. The system lacked the flexibility needed to handle the district's varied workflows, and they decided to not expand past the pilot.
What "good enough" actually costs
Manual and semi-automated payroll processes create costs that don't always show up on budget reports. Staff capacity disappears into approval queues. Errors slip through because systems can't catch them before payment. Departments point fingers when delays occur. And the business office absorbs the burden of keeping everything moving.
Susan Fate, Director of Fiscal Services at Yakima, pointed to the interdepartmental tension these breakdowns create. When a form gets lost or delayed, pay gets delayed. And suddenly, what started as a timesheet problem becomes a trust problem between departments.
The challenge isn't that people aren't working hard enough. It's that the systems weren't built to handle the volume, complexity, and cross-functional coordination that modern district operations require.
Why ERPs alone can't solve it
Skyward and other enterprise systems excel as systems of record to store critical information. But they weren't designed to serve as the interface layer between school sites, employees, approvers, and central office staff.
Sergio Abundiz, Skyward Fiscal HR Supervisor at Yakima, explained his role in facilitating business data processes both inside and outside of Skyward. The district needed a layer that could connect stakeholders across sites and departments without requiring everyone to navigate the ERP directly.
ERPs are powerful, but they're not always accessible to the full range of people who need to interact with district processes. Parents, school site staff, and even some central office team members need simpler interfaces that still connect back to the systems of record.
A different approach to timesheet workflows
When Yakima decided to implement Informed K12, the team started conservatively—rolling out digital timesheets to teachers first to test whether the system could handle real-world complexity.
The results were immediate. Chapman described the transformation: within months, the district was ready to expand to the rest of the staff. The process wasn't just faster—it was fundamentally different.
With Informed K12, approvers could review timesheets, identify errors, and send them back to employees with notes explaining what needed to be fixed. If something looked incorrect—a duplicate entry, an unapproved activity—approvers could deny it before it ever reached the payment queue.
The system stopped problems upstream instead of forcing payroll staff to clean them up downstream—substantially reducing duplicate payments and manual staff time.
The operational leverage hidden in workflows
The improvements extended beyond time and dollar savings. The district gained visibility into approval bottlenecks, clearer audit trails, and the ability to move work forward even when key staff were out of the office.
Fate noted that with the new system, approvers don't have to return to stacks of pending forms after being away. Work keeps moving, and the district maintains continuity even during absences.
Abundiz highlighted the implementation process itself. The team worked cross-functionally to define what the district needed. Once they had clarity, their Informed K12 implementation partner responded to feedback and made changes within hours—allowing the team to test, refine, and confirm that workflows were working as intended without waiting weeks for updates.
The speed of iteration mattered. It meant the district could implement with confidence rather than hoping the system would eventually meet their needs.
What integration actually means
For Skyward districts, the question isn't whether to replace the ERP. It's how to build the connective tissue that makes the ERP more effective.
Process orchestration platforms like Informed K12 sit between stakeholders and systems of record. Forms are easy to create. Workflows route approvals automatically. Data flows in and out of the ERP through APIs or exports. And the friction that used to slow everything down gets removed.
Chapman captured the impact succinctly: the district started with ten workflows and has since moved to an unlimited plan.
That trajectory—starting conservatively, seeing results, and expanding systematically—reflects how districts are finding sustainable wins in a constrained budget environment.
The path forward for payroll processes
Most districts aren't struggling because staff aren't capable. They're struggling because the systems in place weren't designed for the demands of today's operations.
When payroll processes work well, districts protect staff morale, reduce compliance risk, and free capacity for higher-value work. When they break down, the costs compound quickly—financially, operationally, and culturally.
Yakima's experience demonstrates that improving payroll workflows doesn't require replacing core systems or embarking on massive transformation projects. It requires connecting the systems already in place with tools that make them more accessible, more visible, and more effective.
The hidden costs of "good enough" payroll processes are real. And for districts navigating budget pressures and staffing shortages, eliminating those costs isn't optional—it's essential.
Want to see how other districts are modernizing payroll workflows without replacing their ERP?
Watch the full webinar featuring the Yakima School District team as they discuss implementation strategies, change management lessons, and the operational improvements they've seen since integrating Informed K12 with Skyward.
