Nova Scotia Automates Financial Payment Process
The provincial government of Nova Scotia, Canada, has chosen to automate its point-of-sale and financial payment process for its service offices throughout the province. The province’s primary service organization, Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations, will use software to process more than two million payment transactions and $500 million in revenue annually.
Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations handles more than 90 percent of the total interactions and financial transactions taking place between Nova Scotia citizens and the provincial government. Using Payment Manager software, provided by Active Government Solutions, a division of The Active Network, Inc., Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations can now access a single system to automate the processing of any transactions that involve fees, including vehicle permit renewals, marriage or birth certificates, and driver test payments.
In addition to streamlining the province’s payment processes across all of its offices, staff members will be able to scan, validate and process any invoice, permit or registration in seconds, track payments, run daily reports from a single system and show a consolidated view of the day’s financial transactions.
Previously, the province had several disparate systems and processes in place for its point-of-sale operations and dollars were being spent on individual applications each time an upgrade was needed or one of the province’s legacy systems required changing. According to Chad MacDonald, Senior Project Manager, Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations, the disparate systems created barriers and challenges for staff, including working without a standard reconciliation process, depending on manual and time-consuming processes, difficulty adding new products and services, and entering data multiple times in multiple locations.
Using Payment Manager, staff members will also be able to generate customized reports without requiring help from IT staff. “Previously, there wasn’t an easy, structured way to create new reports, which is what our finance department really needed,” MacDonald said. “Through the new software, we’re hoping to reduce some stress and gain some efficiencies.”
For more information on Active Government Solutions, a division of The Active Network, visit: http://www.activegovernments.com