XENIA — Making payments at the Greene County Treasurer’s Office may look a little differently in the future.
Greene County Commissioners voted June 6 to approve a bid award requested by Treasurer Kraig Hagler for Nortech (ReCo) — a company that, if signed into contract, would provide a new automated cashiering and revenue collection system for the office.
Out of several bids, ReCo showed the lowest cost for the county. The total cost for the first year would be $87,645, with an $18,895 annual support fee.
Hagler, who took now-commissioner Dick Gould’s spot in February, said his office — and taxpayers — can benefit from a new system, which would streamline the payment process, increasing efficiency and accountability, and reducing opportunity for error. Hagler left the banking industry to become treasurer.
“Taking in payments is my background,” Hagler told commissioners at the meeting. “I had the opportunity to come into the office during tax season, so during the height of when we are the busiest, and I noticed there was a bottle neck in the systems we were using. There’s no way for a payment coupon to directly communicate with any of our systems without a manual entry.”
The new system would include a check scanning and imaging solution, allowing the cashier to scan checks and coupons upon receipt. It would also include document management capabilities, providing the ability to search and retrieve scanned checks and documents associated with the treasurer’s revenue collection processes.
Hagler said currently, if a customer comes into his office to make a property tax payment in cash, they receive a cash register receipt that says “cash”, with no owner’s name, parcel number or other identifying words.
“We’ll be able to track everything clear down from the time that payment was touched by my employee” he said. “When the customer leaves they’re going to have parcel number, owner’s name, type of payment, so it gives us the ability to actually be held accountable.”
Commissioners questioned during an earlier work session the return on investment of the new system.
“We’re buying software and hardware so return on investment is hard to calculate,” Hagler said. “It’s not a return on investment in dollars but this is a win for the county when it comes to what are we doing for our taxpayers, we’re only growing … It’s bringing us up to date but it’s also giving us the opportunity to move into the future.”
Hagler said other surrounding counties are already using the Nortech system.
All three commissioners voted to approve the bid award.