Property Tax Billing and Collection is a stressful time of year for most municipalities.  This type of revenue accounts for as much as 80% of a municipalities revenue in some regions.  Here are some quick tips to stay organized during tax season.

1. When receiving data from the Assessor’s office be sure to receive a report of the totals generated at the same time as the file so they are in sync.
2. As the Assessor if the tax roll file layout has changed from last year.  This can save you days worth of data import work.
3. With GovCollect, make sure the import pva report matches and you initial it so our team can move forward.
4. Create your annual rate codes and test them ahead of time.  Be sure to update the general ledger numbers if you change them from year to year.
5. If you print your own bills make sure you order paper stock plus 10% for any reprints that may occur.
6. Save lots of postage by using GovCollect’s mortgage export function.  This will create a file of all the properties paid by a mortgage company that you can email to mortgage companies.  This saves you from printing and mailing those bills.
7. Make sure your due and past due dates are not on a weekend.
8. Consider multiple payment options to increase collections like GovCollect’s partnership with Municipay for credit cards and echecks with no fee to the municipality.
9. Stay on top of assessment changes and bill them out promptly.
10. Use GovCollect’s billing wizard so you can reprint any bill or give citizens access from the web.

For more tips visit support.govcollect.com.

The 2016 GovCollect Sql release will be officially launched Oct 31, 2015 to all of our users.  Beta testers have offered their feedback and it is very exciting.

Tom Sturm, head of customer support, offers insight.  “This release contains over 25 targeted refinements focused on the user’s experience.  We invested hours in reducing clicks, clearing up message box text, keyboard tab orders and more.  All items were suggestions from users.  Then we addressed specific GovCollect Wizards for billing procedures as well as the GovCollect New Account Setup Wizard.  These processes were refined to standardize the output to be compatible with 2 wonderful new features;

1 Auto PDF Create and Import to account note history for easy reprints.

2 Integrated Web Portal for Citizen Services allowing citizens access to all their history for reprints and more.

The most impressive update in this release is the redesign and organized reports menu.  The menu has been organized to match reports with specific procedures in the system to make it fast and obvious for users to get the information the want.  This menu fully embraces Accounts Receivable Balancing so that our customers have a stronger daily position.”

Look for more updates from our staff on this exciting release at www.govcollect.com.