Stop the Software Bleed

The upcoming September 14 Council meeting includes the City’s preliminary 2027 budget process. The staff report says:

“The fall budget process will focus on the 2027 operating budget, including the first year of using Euna as part of budget development.”

The agenda preview also explains that most departments will continue using their established Excel budget templates during this transition year.

That caught my attention because Council approved a $325,292 five-year contract for Euna budgeting software in April 2025.

By the end of 2026, roughly $155,000 will have been funded for Euna, while 2027 is only the first year it becomes part of actual budget development.

Read the September 14 Council agenda preview on HelpOS

We are building on a dying foundation

Underneath Euna sits Microsoft Dynamics GP, the City’s core system for accounting, accounts payable, accounts receivable, property taxes and utility billing.

Microsoft is ending Dynamics GP product support in 2029.

The City has also budgeted $164,200 for a GP/work-order software transformation project.

So we are spending $164,200 improving a financial system approaching retirement, while spending another $325,292 for proprietary budgeting software layered around it.

And the City’s total software-maintenance budget has reached $696,756 per year, up from $492,371 in 2024.

That is an increase of $204,385, or 41.5%, in only two years.

We are giving up control

Every additional proprietary system brings another subscription, vendor relationship, integration and migration problem.

Euna’s current Canadian data-processing agreement says customer personal information is primarily processed in the United States, unless separate Canadian data-residency arrangements have been made.

Our municipal financial infrastructure should be under local control.

Open source can be extremely secure

Whether software is proprietary or open source is separate from whether it is secure. Security depends on how the system is designed, maintained and operated.

Linux is a good real-world example. Every one of the world’s TOP500 supercomputers has run a Linux-based operating system since 2017. CISA’s catalogue of vulnerabilities confirmed to be exploited in the wild also shows a large difference: a recent snapshot lists 362 Microsoft vulnerabilities compared with 24 Linux vulnerabilities. (t.co)

If someone specifically thinks hiding source code is what protects a financial system, the cryptography world settled that question a long time ago: secure systems are designed to remain secure even when an attacker understands exactly how they work. Only the keys need to stay secret.

ERPNext supports two-factor authentication, detailed role-based permissions and access logging. For Owen Sound, I would combine those capabilities with backups, network segmentation, prompt security updates, monitoring and independent security testing.

The City would have an open, auditable platform secured to municipal standards, with access to financial data tightly controlled.

Proven savings at larger organizations

ERPNext is already replacing expensive proprietary systems at much larger organizations.

FR8, a trucking platform with more than 50,000 active users, moved from SAP Business One to ERPNext and reported a 72% reduction in server costs.

Brightgrid Technologies reports that its ERPNext implementation cost about 75% less than the Oracle solution it had been quoted, while supporting traceability across more than 9 million serial numbers.

An ERPNext implementation for SRMD Global, a non-profit operating across 14 countries, reports approximately US$180,000 per year in savings on software licences. That is remarkably close to the roughly $166,000 per year in recurring proprietary software costs already identified in Owen Sound, although the currencies and organizations are different.

Zerodha, India’s largest stock broker, also uses ERPNext throughout its internal operations, handling 25–30 million records per day.

These examples show that replacing proprietary enterprise software with open-source systems can produce substantial savings while operating at scales far beyond what Owen Sound requires.

What I will do as Mayor

I will stop the planned full migration into Euna and pursue cancellation of the remaining contract before Owen Sound becomes dependent on it.

About $170,000 of scheduled Euna costs remain.

I would also redirect the $164,200 currently budgeted for GP and work-order management upgrades toward replacing GP itself.

Together, that represents more than $330,000 of already planned spending that could instead help pay for the replacement, subject to existing contracts and what has already been spent.

The proposed base is ERPNext/Frappe, so this is primarily an implementation and migration project. ERPNext already provides the general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, payments, budgeting, purchasing, assets, permissions, workflows and reporting. Open-source Frappe modules also already handle utility billing, meter readings, configurable rates, invoicing and payments.

The cost is therefore mainly people’s time: configuring the system, migrating the GP data, adapting the relatively small amount of Ontario municipal logic required, and working with Finance, Water and other departments to verify the results.

I currently estimate roughly 1,000–1,500 technical hours, approximately:

• 100–150 hours understanding existing systems and mapping the data
• 300–450 hours configuring ERPNext and migrating GP financial data
• 250–400 hours adapting property tax, MPAC and water-billing functions
• 100–150 hours for integrations, security, servers and backups
• 250–350 hours for testing, reconciliation and final cutover

With departmental validation and independent security review, that puts the preliminary incremental implementation cost at roughly $80,000–$160,000, depending largely on whether the work is performed by an employee, local contractor or a combination of both.

The main municipal work would be adapting Ontario-specific functions such as MPAC assessment data, property-tax classes and rates, interim and final bills, instalments, arrears and penalties. Those functions can feed directly into ERPNext’s existing accounting and receivables system.

The largest part of the project is careful migration and validation. The new system can run alongside GP until every balance, tax bill and utility account reconciles to the cent.

That means the replacement could cost less than half of the more than $330,000 already scheduled or budgeted for Euna and GP-related spending, while creating a financial system the City owns and controls.

The City can keep the Excel processes staff already understand during the transition. The new financial system can run alongside GP until every balance reconciles to the cent.

Then GP can be retired.

The new system would run on servers here in Owen Sound and Grey County. The City would control its financial database, source code and infrastructure.

Then we keep the real savings

We can already identify substantial recurring proprietary software costs:

• Euna: about $55,500 per year
• ProjectTeam: $24,840 per year
• StoneShare/Gimmal records management: $42,000 per year
• Cloudpermit: about $44,000 per year in additional operating cost compared with the system it replaced

That is approximately $166,000 per year in documented recurring costs across just four systems.

That still does not include the City’s actual annual costs for Dynamics GP, WorkTech, PerfectMind recreation and facility booking, and other systems buried inside the $696,756 software-maintenance budget.

As Mayor, I would use my authority during budget preparation to direct staff to provide the vendor invoices, contracts, licence costs, support fees and termination dates behind that number.

I would publish them in a Software Cost Ledger so residents can see exactly what we are paying for and which systems can be consolidated or replaced.

Not every system would disappear immediately. They would be replaced carefully as functions are migrated and tested.

But every recurring proprietary cost we genuinely eliminate becomes money that can go back into roads, transit, housing, emergency services and other priorities, or simply reduce the amount Council needs to collect in property taxes.

Build it here and share it

Other municipalities need the same things Owen Sound does: accounting, property taxation, water billing, budgeting and financial reporting.

The municipal modules we develop should be open source.

Georgian Bluffs, Meaford, Hanover and other municipalities could use them. When another municipality improves the software, Owen Sound can benefit from those improvements too.

Instead of municipalities repeatedly paying proprietary vendors to solve the same problems, we can build it once, improve it together and keep the money in our communities.

Stop the software bleed. Build it here. Own it. Share it. Use the savings for better services and lower taxes.