Payment Collections & Revenue Management Software

Many tax collectors in America struggle with inefficient, outdated revenue management systems. But Collier County, Palm Beach County, Tippecanoe County and the City of St. Louis have discovered the easy, accountable and accessible payment collections, revenue management, and tax collecting software solutions of System Innovators.

Collier County

The Collier County Tax Collector´s office performs billing and collection operations for Collier County in south Florida, as well as many state agencies. As the area rapidly grew from a tax roll of $38 million to one of over $500 million, Guy Carlton, Collier County´s Tax Collector, identified a need to provide the public with more efficient tax collecting software.

"The question is never how many people to lay off," Mr. Carlton said, "but how many people do I not have to hire. In a fast growth community, we need a system that allows us to do the work with present staff. The savings are tremendous, and the only way this is possible is with products like RevenueCollector."

Located in south Florida, Collier County has grown from a tax roll of $38 million to over $500 million. RevenueCollector has been in production for one year and is used to process real estate, personal property, delinquent tax, occupational licenses, hunting and fishing, and water and sewer payments. Over-the-counter payments are collected using CASHIER for windows, Version 4, while payments from their remittance processor are imported into RevenueCollector using the Import Wizard

New Possibilities

Shirley Watral, MIS Director, added, "RevenueCollector provides the foundation for adding new payment collection sources. We plan to offer Internet payment options and these payments will be processed through RevenueCollector. We are also planning to export data from RevenueCollector to our Financial System therefore eliminating the manual posting of balance sheets that is currently performed."

Ms. Watral added, "The Consolidated Reporting Module of RevenueCollector allows us to produce reports at any time that reflect all current payment transactions. We no longer have to wait for the daily reports from the host system to determine how much money was collected at individual registers. Now we have the flexibility to report by payment class or by register and to perform spot checks for auditing on the different cash registers."

Tippecanoe County

Oneta Toole, Treasurer for Tippecanoe County in Indiana, agrees that the consolidation of all payment data is an important benefit of System Innovators´ systems. "RevenueCollector provides the ability to retrieve information quickly. CASHIER for windows allows us to immediately print the receipt and endorse a check, and the payment is updated to the host system real-time." The Treasurer added, "The fast payment process enhances productivity, and this is a real plus."

The Tippecanoe County Treasurer is the custodian of all monies belonging to the County and is responsible for the billing and the collection of property taxes, taxes involved in bankruptcy, inheritance tax, gross income tax and innkeepers tax, plus monies from mobile home and alcoholic beverage permits.

"Based on what we know now and what we see in the future, RevenueCollector will meet our payment collection requirements," concluded Ms. Toole. "We are looking forward to pursuing new uses of the system."

Palm Beach County

The Palm Beach County Tax Collector has implemented tax collecting software solutions from System Innovators to process payments for personal property taxes, real estate taxes, occupational licenses, hunting and fishing stamps, and the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). Palm Beach County uses over 70 cashiering workstations for over-the counter payment collections and imports mail payments from their remittance processor to the Consolidated Database to store all payment activity in one place. As part of the import process, RevenueCollector verifies that the amount paid is equal to the amount due and creates a file of rejected payments that are reviewed and then reprocessed.

DMV payments are processed through an online interface to the Florida Real-Time Vehicle Information System (FRVIS). According to Pat Bradley, Palm Beach County Tax Collector FRVIS Project Manager, "With the real-time inquiry and update provided by RevenueCollector, FRVIS payments are processed more accurately." Previously, Palm Beach used a batch interface process that was often unreliable. Approximately 1.5 million DMV payments are updated to FRVIS annually from Palm Beach.

City of St. Louis

The City of St. Louis is also ready for any tax situation. RevenueCollector was implemented to process payments for real estate parcels, personal property taxes and public utilities. As Robert Kummer, Senior Assistant Collector and Chief Financial Officer, put it, "Ronald Leggett, the Collector of Revenue, has always wanted the tax collection process to be smooth and painless. He has continuously supported improvements and the implementation of RevenueCollector was a giant leap into the 21st century."

The City of St. Louis has four cashiering workstations and six freestanding collection stations placed in strategic bank lobbies during the busy tax season. In addition, public utility payments are imported into the RevenueCollector database.

"RevenueCollector makes the reporting process easier. We can run a report on all payments and complete the balancing before making a deposit," Mr. Kummer said. "The Query Tool in RevenueCollector allows us to list all of today´s payments or to identify a particular payment so that we can find the remittance processor microfilm number that is associated with the bill. It is easy to make corrections using the Payment Administration Module."

Back to Case Studies