Tax Collect Year End Reminders

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Josh

With the calendar year end upon us, we wanted to send a quick reminder to those of you with a Fiscal Year ending December 31st. First is a summary of your options for when you actually physically execute your year end.  Second are a few links to documents that can assist you with finalizing your MS-61 Report and generating a database backup.

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Do You Need To Archive Your Taxable Values?

Posted on November 29, 2012 by Josh

As we approach the end of the year it’s important that some of you remember to manually archive your system’s 2012 taxable values. For those of you that use Avitar Assessing in conjunction with Avitar Tax Collect, this archival will be done automatically for you by the system when you formalize your final tax warrant — which is to say you don’t need to do anything. If, however, you use Avitar Assessing to determine values, and you then reenter those values into another application for calculating and collecting taxes then it’s impossible for the system to determine when you have truly finalized your 2012 assessments. Those of you in this latter category will need to manually archive the taxable values if you wish to have them display properly in the Value History grid. Keep reading for instructions on how to do so…

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Errors You May Encounter

Posted on November 29, 2012 by Josh

Two of our intrepid users recently reported receiving very specific errors within the Tax Collect program. You really need to perfectly thread the needle to encounter either of these errors but we have a simple fix for each of them — one you can do yourself, the other you’ll need to call us to apply a script. Let us know if, after reading the scenarios, you either need to run a script or you have questions.

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Tax Collect 6.8.5 Follow-Up

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Josh

We sent out an update last week for Tax Collect.  Hopefully you’ve received it by now.  We wanted to let you know about one problem we’ve found with the update when printing tax bills in some municipalities.  But before you panic, just know that the problem does not affect everyone and the solution is quick and easy.  First some background…

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Tax Collect Update 6.8.5 Is On The Way

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Josh

We will be distributing a Tax Collect software update — version 6.8.5 — in the next few days.  This update has a number of features and enhancements you all have requested over the last several months, several of which will help you with printing tax bills.  If you’ve already mailed your bills, do not feel cheated — there are also several changes that will assist you with processing payments and deleting prior year payments after you’ve closed your fiscal period.  To review the list of changes in full detail you can read a copy of the update notes now on our website.  And keep an eye out for the update disc in the mail in the next week.  Thanks.

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Interim Building Permit Update

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Josh

Just wanted to update you on two issues/problems that you guys have brought to our attention since the last update.  The first issue involves a system error if/when you add/update an Action (default name) and do not enter a Completed Date (default name).  The second issue concerns the appearance/readability at certain screen resolutions of several configuration options within the mailing labels dialog box.  We apologize for the oversight.  We are addressing both of these and should have an update available within the next week.  We’ll update you when it’s ready.  Thanks.

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Weaving Your Own Safety Net with Local Backups

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Amy

Several times a year we get a call from a user in full-on panic mode because a hard drive on their town’s server has crashed and no one seems to be able to locate a recent backup of their system’s data.  While we generally configure automated backups on the server when we install, without routine maintenance it’s difficult to ensure that these will remain a viable resource in the event a restore is needed.  Scripted tasks can stop working if someone changes passwords, directories can get moved or renamed, old tapes can fail — there are any number of reasons why the backups you think you have may not actually exist when you need them.  Fortunately, regardless of the Avitar application(s) you use, there is a simple process by which you the user can ensure you always have a recent system backup in the event of a catastrophic failure on the server.  It is impossible to overstate the value of you the user taking control of your own backup procedures by following these simple steps.

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Tax Kiosk Usage Information

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Josh

It was great to see so many of you again at last week’s conference in North Conway. During  our break-out vendor session on Tuesday, the presentation and discussion focused almost exclusively on online tax bill presentment, payment, and paperless billing. For those of you who are not online yet, or are online in a limited capacity, we will be posting videos in the coming weeks to help you and/or your selectmen understand the process better. As we discussed in North Conway, in order for both current and prospective users to get a sense of the usage we’ve seen thus far for various towns, we wanted to provide you all with some snapshots and statistics.

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Applying an Abatement Refund to Outstanding Taxes

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Patty

Every now and then, we receive a call questioning if an abatement (which specifies an individual tax year) can be applied to another outstanding invoice for that owner from a different tax year. For example, the assessors give you an abatement for an owner’s 2010 property tax. When you go to post the abatement into Avitar’s Tax Collect system, you find the customer has paid his 2010 property taxes, but has an outstanding 2011 tax lien. The question is whether you are allowed to apply the abatement to his 2011 tax lien.

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Assigning Decal Color to 2014 Decal Inventory

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Patty

DMV is in the process of delivering the 2014 decal inventory. Once you receive the decals, the inventory will need to be added into the Avitar Clerk system. We’re aware that everyone knows how to add a batch of decals to the system; however, it is worth reiterating the process to change the decal background color in the system to match the current year decal color.

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