Feature Spotlight: Online Payments
Many of the agency executives we work with told us they were interested in offering their citizens online payments, as it would help their municipalities improve customer service, reduce trips to City Hall for citizens, and automate tasks that would otherwise take up staff time. These can all be accomplished through Comcate’s Online Payments feature, available for both the Code Enforcement Manager and the Animal Control Manager solutions.
The Benefits of Online Payments
The Online Payments feature makes it easier for citizens to pay their tickets, fines or fees to your municipality. Instead of taking time out of their day to visit a government office and pay in-person, citizens would have the convenience to make payments online from any desktop or mobile device. Agency staff benefit by having payments automatically logged and reported, reducing their time and effort to support this service and reducing potential errors.
Working in conjunction with Fee Tracker, which allows agencies to add fees to cases with violations, the new Online Payments feature offers:
Unique Online Payment Portal: Every agency that utilizes Online Payments will get their own payment portal. From there, it’s up to your municipality if you’d like to create a vanity URL or make QR codes to direct citizens to the portal to make their payments. Once citizens reach the portal, they simply enter in their first and last name, along with their case number, to view their outstanding balance and make a payment.
Citizen view of an outstanding balance within an Online Payments portal
Confirmation Emails: Once a payment has been made, the system will send a confirmation email and deduct the payment from a user’s total balance.
Transaction Fee Support: Switch on “Add Transaction Fees” within Comcate to have transaction fees automatically added to outstanding balances within the portal.
Finance Tab: Agencies that add-on Online Payments will also have access to a new Finance tab that will let them view Transactions such as Fines, Late Fees and Payments. This tab allows users to filter and download fines and add payment activity to help your finance team keep their reconciliations up-to-date.
Collections: Agencies will also now have the option to send specific cases to Collections. Simply hit the “Send to Collections” button to download a data file that can be shared with your Collections agency. Once the payment has been made, you can then remove the case from Collections.
The Online Payments feature is available as an add-on for the Code Enforcement Manager and Animal Control software solutions. The feature is currently operational through authorize.net, a Visa solution that accepts all major credit cards. Once a citizen clicks “Enter Payment Details” from their outstanding balance page in the portal, they will be redirected to authorize.net to enter in their card information. If your agency currently partners with another payment vendor but you are interested in utilizing Online Payments, let us know and we can explore the possibility of integration!
Interested in adding Online Payments to your account? Contact us today!
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Learn how Comcate can help make government delivery simple, and offer a modern digital experience to help you increase transparency, efficiency, and performance across your departments. If you have any questions about implementing our software, please fill out the form below or call us directly at (415) 632-1248.
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