Caselle Training: How to Train Your Team on Caselle Connect

If you work in municipal government and use Caselle Connect, there's a good chance one person on your team knows how everything works. Maybe two if you're lucky.

That person knows how to run utility billing in Caselle software. They know the quirks of your fund accounting setup. They know which journal codes go where during year-end processing. They've been at it for 15, 20, sometimes 30 years. And if you're reading this, you're probably starting to think about what happens when they leave. Figuring out Caselle training -- how to train your team on Caselle Connect before that day arrives -- isn't optional. It's survival.

I'm Yuval, founder of Glitter AI. Through building a tool that helps teams create training guides from screen recordings, I've talked to dozens of Caselle Connect teams who all describe the same problem. And I'll say it plainly: it doesn't have to be this painful.

The Ticking Clock of Caselle Tribal Knowledge in Government

Here's the thing about municipal government staff. They stick around for a long time. That sounds like a benefit -- and it is, until it isn't.

A utility billing clerk who's been with the city for 25 years has built up a staggering amount of knowledge. Not just about Caselle Connect itself, but about your specific configuration. Your rate structures. Your fund chart. The workarounds for that one thing Caselle does that nobody can explain. All of that is tribal knowledge, and it lives entirely in that person's head.

Government employees don't leave one at a time, either. They tend to retire in waves. A whole generation of municipal staff is reaching retirement age right now, and when they go, decades of institutional know-how go with them.

I've talked to cities where the person who ran Caselle Connect retired on a Friday and the new hire started the following Monday with nothing but a sticky note that said "ask Janet" -- except Janet retired too.

The hidden cost of undocumented processes hits government offices especially hard. Missed utility billing cycles. Payroll errors. Year-end close that used to take two days suddenly taking two weeks because nobody knows the right sequence. These aren't hypothetical scenarios. They're happening right now in municipalities everywhere.

Why Traditional Caselle Training Methods Fail

Most government offices try to handle Caselle Connect training in one of three ways. Teams tell us all of them fall short.

The Shadow Method

The new hire sits next to the experienced person for a few weeks. They watch. They scribble notes. They try to absorb 20 years of knowledge through osmosis. By the third day, they've already forgotten what they learned on the first day. And the experienced employee just lost weeks of productivity doing double duty.

The Binder

Someone puts together a massive three-ring binder full of printed screenshots and typed instructions. It takes months to compile. By the time it's done, half the screenshots are outdated because Caselle pushed an update. The binder ends up on a shelf. Nobody opens it.

Caselle's Own Help Docs

Caselle has help documentation, and it's useful for understanding what buttons do in this municipal government accounting software. But it doesn't know your city's fund structure. It doesn't know that you split water and sewer billing into separate cycles. It has no idea that your accounts payable process requires three approvals for anything over $5,000 because that's what your city council mandated. Your team needs to learn your Caselle setup, not Caselle software in the abstract.

The real issue is that none of these approaches capture the full picture. Caselle Connect is a visual, click-heavy application. You need to see the screens, hear the reasoning, and have something to reference later. Text alone won't get the job done. Observation alone won't stick.

How Glitter Works for Caselle Connect Training

Here's the approach that actually works, and it takes a fraction of the time.

Instead of writing documentation or scheduling weeks of shadow training, you just do the task. Open Caselle Connect, start a Glitter recording, and walk through the process while talking out loud. Explain what you're clicking and why. Mention the things that trip people up. Call out the details that only you know.

When you stop recording, Glitter automatically generates a complete training guide with:

• Video of your entire walkthrough
• Annotated screenshots of each key step
• Written instructions pulled from what you said and did
• Voiceover so people can watch and listen

One recording. Four formats. Every learning style covered.

This works especially well for government offices because the people who know Caselle software best are often the least likely to sit down and write a manual. They're busy running payroll, processing utility bills, and closing the books. But they can do their job while recording. That's it. That's the whole process.

For more on why this multi-format approach matters, I've written about training documentation and how the best teams handle it.

The 9 Caselle Connect Workflows You Should Document First

Caselle Connect covers a lot of ground. You don't need to document everything at once. Start with the workflows that would cause the most pain if your key person disappeared tomorrow.

1. Utility Billing

This is the big one for most municipalities. Walk through a complete billing cycle -- reading meter data, importing readings, calculating bills, handling adjustments for leaks or estimated reads, processing payments, and generating the billing run. Cover your specific rate structures and how they're configured. Show how you handle delinquent accounts, payment arrangements, and deposit management.

Utility billing in Caselle has a lot of moving parts, and it's the workflow that tends to cause the most panic when the experienced person leaves.

2. Accounts Payable

Government AP comes with extra layers of complexity. Walk through the full lifecycle: entering an invoice, coding it to the right fund and account, routing it for approval, processing the payment batch, printing checks or setting up ACH payments, and recording it in the general ledger. Cover your city's specific approval thresholds and any purchase order requirements.

For a deeper dive into AP documentation, check out the accounting SOP guide.

3. Payroll Processing

Payroll in a municipality isn't just cutting checks. You're dealing with multiple pay schedules, union contracts, PERS contributions, overtime rules, comp time, and benefits deductions. Record the entire payroll cycle from timesheet entry through check printing and transmittal processing. Show how payroll journal codes connect to the general ledger. This is one of those workflows where one wrong click can cause real problems, so capturing the exact sequence matters.

4. General Ledger Entries

Show how to make journal entries, how your fund structure works, and how to navigate the chart of accounts. Cover adjusting entries, recurring entries, and interfund transfers. Explain your journal code structure -- which codes are for payroll, which for AP, which for manual entries. This is foundational stuff that affects everything else in Caselle.

5. Budget Management

Walk through budget entry, amendment processing, and budget-to-actual reporting. Government budgets are legally binding documents, so accuracy here isn't optional. Show how to set up the annual budget, process mid-year amendments with council approval, and generate the reports your finance director and auditors need.

6. Cash Receipts

Recording incoming payments -- property tax collections, utility payments, permit fees, court fines -- means knowing which fund and account to credit. Show how to process receipts, how to handle over-payments and refunds, and how to reconcile the cash drawer at the end of the day. Cover the daily deposit process and how it ties back to the general ledger.

7. Government Reports

Municipalities have reporting requirements that look nothing like private sector accounting. Walk through generating fund balance reports, revenue and expenditure reports, budget comparison reports, and any state-mandated financial statements. Show how to set the right parameters, filter by fund or department, and export reports for council packets or auditor requests.

8. Fund Accounting

This is where Caselle Connect diverges most from commercial accounting software. Government fund accounting tracks money by restriction and purpose, not just by department. Record how your funds are structured, how interfund transfers work, how to verify fund balances, and how to make sure restricted funds are properly segregated. If you've been doing this for years, the logic feels like second nature -- but it's deeply confusing to someone walking in fresh.

9. Year-End Processing

Year-end close in a municipality is a multi-week process involving closing all funds, generating annual financial statements, preparing for the audit, rolling balances forward, and setting up the new fiscal year. This is the workflow most likely to exist entirely in one person's head. Record the full sequence, step by step. Your auditors will thank you. Your successor will thank you even more.

Why Video Plus Screenshots Plus Written Steps Beats Any Single Format

Let me be direct about this. A written manual alone won't work for Caselle Connect training. A screen recording by itself won't cut it either. Here's why the combination matters.

Video captures the flow. People see the rhythm of a workflow -- where you move quickly, where you pause, which screens you skip past and which ones need attention. It's the closest thing to sitting next to the expert.

Screenshots capture the details. When someone's in the middle of processing a utility billing run and needs to check they're on the right screen, they don't want to scrub through a 20-minute video. They want to glance at a screenshot and confirm they're in the right place.

Written steps capture the logic. Why you coded that expense to Fund 40 instead of the General Fund. What the approval threshold is. When to use a manual journal entry versus letting the AP module post automatically. Text is searchable, scannable, and quick to reference.

Voiceover captures the context. The warnings that only come from experience -- "don't run the billing cycle until you've verified the meter import, because I made that mistake once and it took three days to fix." That kind of insight rarely shows up in written documentation.

When all four come from a single recording, they stay perfectly in sync. The screenshot matches the video frame matches the written step matches the spoken explanation. That consistency is what makes training actually stick. I've written more about this approach in my post on how to train employees faster with documentation.

How to Structure Your Caselle Connect Training Program

Once you've recorded the core workflows, you need a plan for how new staff actually works through them.

Month 1: Foundations

Start with navigation, the chart of accounts, and your fund structure. Then move into cash receipts and basic general ledger lookups. These are low-risk tasks where mistakes are easy to catch. Share the relevant Glitter guides and let the new hire practice with real (but supervised) transactions.

Month 2: Core Workflows

Move into utility billing, accounts payable, and payroll. These are the daily and weekly tasks that keep the city running. Have the new hire work through the guides, then perform the real tasks with someone nearby to answer questions.

Month 3: Advanced and Periodic Tasks

Budget amendments, government reports, fund reconciliation, and year-end prep. By now they should be comfortable navigating Caselle and can handle more complex processes with the guides as a safety net.

This is the approach I describe in knowledge transfer from retiring employees -- capture the knowledge systematically before the expert walks out the door.

Tips for Recording Better Caselle Connect Training Guides

Talk Like You're Explaining to a Colleague

Don't read from a script. Just talk naturally. Say things like "I always double-check this field because it defaulted wrong on me once" or "this part looks confusing but here's what's actually going on." Those natural, conversational explanations are worth more than polished narration.

Show the Edge Cases

The straightforward transactions aren't what trip people up. Record how you handle a partial payment on a delinquent utility account. Show what happens when a payroll entry doesn't balance. Walk through the workaround for that one Caselle quirk that everyone on the Caselle user forums complains about. The edge cases are where the real knowledge lives.

One Workflow Per Guide

"How to process the monthly utility billing run" is a good guide. "Everything you need to know about Caselle Connect" is not. Keep each recording focused on a single process. Shorter guides are easier to record, easier to find, and easier to update when something changes.

Name Them So People Can Find Them

"Caselle - Processing Bi-Weekly Payroll" is a good title. "Training Video 7" is not. When someone is panicking because they've never processed year-end close on their own, they need to find the right guide in seconds.

Building a Complete Municipal Knowledge Base

Having built Glitter, I've seen our best teams document 5+ different operational workflows. The ones who get the most value aren't creating one guide -- they're building an entire knowledge base.

Your Caselle training guides are the foundation, but the same approach works for every process in your office. How you handle public records requests. How you prepare the council packet. How you process business license renewals. How you reconcile the bank statement. Every one of those processes is living in someone's head right now.

The goal isn't perfect documentation. It's making sure your city can keep running when the person who "just knows" how to do everything takes their well-earned retirement. Start with the Caselle workflow that worries you most -- the one where you think "if Linda left tomorrow, we'd be in real trouble." Record that one first. Then do the next one. Then the next.

One guide per week. In three months, you'll have a training library that would have taken years to write the old way.

Government work matters. The people who pay their water bills and rely on their city services don't care that your best Caselle user retired. They just want things to work. Documenting your processes is how you make sure they do.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does Caselle Connect training take for a new municipal employee?

Most municipalities need 2-3 months to get a new hire comfortable with core Caselle Connect tasks like utility billing, accounts payable, and payroll processing. With documented training guides that combine video, screenshots, and written steps, you can cut that timeline down because new staff can learn at their own pace and revisit guides whenever they need a refresher. The exact timeline depends on how many Caselle modules your office uses and the complexity of your fund structure.

What Caselle Connect modules should I train my team on first?

Start with the modules your team uses daily: cash receipts, accounts payable, and general ledger navigation. Then move to utility billing and payroll, which are more complex but just as critical. Save advanced tasks like year-end processing, budget amendments, and fund reconciliation for after the basics are solid. Prioritize whatever workflow would cause the most disruption if your experienced staff member were suddenly unavailable.

Can I use Caselle's built-in help documentation for training?

Caselle's help documentation is useful for understanding what specific features do, but it won't cover your municipality's specific setup. Your team needs to learn your fund structure, your rate tables, your approval workflows, and your reporting requirements. Generic help docs can supplement your internal training guides, but they can't replace documentation that shows exactly how your city uses Caselle Connect.

How do I document Caselle Connect utility billing for my team?

Record yourself walking through a complete billing cycle in Caselle Connect while narrating what you're doing. Cover meter data import, bill calculation, handling adjustments and estimated reads, payment processing, and generating the billing run. Include your specific rate structures and how delinquent accounts are handled. A tool like Glitter will automatically generate video, screenshots, and written steps from that single recording, giving your team a complete reference guide.

What's the biggest risk of not documenting Caselle Connect processes?

The biggest risk is losing institutional knowledge when experienced staff retire. Government employees often stay for decades, and when they leave, all that knowledge about your specific Caselle configuration, fund structure, and workflow quirks leaves with them. This can lead to missed billing cycles, payroll errors, failed audits, and year-end close processes that take weeks instead of days. Documenting processes before key staff depart is far less expensive than rebuilding that knowledge from scratch.

How often should I update Caselle Connect training guides?

Update your guides whenever Caselle releases a software update that changes the interface, whenever your municipality changes its processes (new rate structures, different approval thresholds, updated fund chart), and whenever state reporting requirements change. A general review at least once a year is a good idea, ideally before year-end processing. If you're using Glitter, re-recording a workflow takes just a few minutes, which makes regular updates practical.

How do I train new staff on Caselle Connect year-end processing?

Year-end processing is best documented as a series of focused guides rather than one massive recording. Break it into stages: closing individual funds, generating annual financial statements, preparing audit schedules, rolling balances forward, and setting up the new fiscal year. Record each stage separately with narration explaining the sequence and reasoning. Have the new hire shadow someone through at least one full year-end cycle with the guides as reference before doing it independently.

Is Caselle Connect hard to learn for new municipal employees?

Caselle Connect has a learning curve, especially for staff who haven't worked with fund accounting or municipal government accounting software before. The concepts of fund accounting, restricted funds, and government budgetary compliance add complexity beyond what commercial accounting software requires. That said, with well-structured training guides that show your specific setup and explain the reasoning behind each step, new employees can get up to speed much faster than through trial and error or verbal instruction alone.

How do I handle Caselle Connect training for multiple departments?

Create separate guide collections for each department based on the Caselle modules they use. Your finance department needs general ledger, accounts payable, and year-end processing guides. Your utility department needs billing, meter reading import, and payment processing guides. Your HR department needs payroll guides. Some guides like basic navigation and cash receipts may apply across departments. Organize your training library by department and role so staff can quickly find what's relevant to them.

What's the best way to preserve Caselle Connect knowledge before someone retires?

Start documenting at least 6 months before the retirement date. Have the retiring employee record themselves performing every workflow they handle, talking through each step and explaining the reasoning and edge cases. Pay special attention to periodic processes like year-end close, annual budget entry, and quarterly reporting that only happen a few times per year and are easy to forget. Use a tool like Glitter to automatically convert those recordings into searchable, shareable training guides that the replacement can reference indefinitely.