Online Filing and Digital Workflows Enhance Productivity

• Industry: County Government
• Location: Hillsboro, Oregon
• Number of Employees: 2200
• Population: 600,000
• Tyler Client Since: 1989
• Solutions Used: Assessment & Tax Pro [powered by Orion™], SmartFile

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Challenges

Washington County serves a population of more than 600,000 people and tax bill collection time is an annual challenge. As the county reassessed its business processes after the COVID-19 pandemic, the Assessment & Taxation office was looking for ways to improve the citizen experience. Specifically, the Personal Property team noticed significant time and staffing commitments to process the growing number of personal property returns; not to mention the increased constituent demand for a more time-sensitive and convenient option.

During tax season, bins of mail were delivered to the office, and Washington County had to ramp up staffing to adequately respond to peak processing times. The county had staff in multiple departments helping to open, sort, scan, stamp, enter, and review the load of documents. It became clear that a more modern and efficient process could benefit both the organization and its citizens.

Washington County needed a way to reduce paper, eliminate redundancies, and serve taxpayers more transparently. The county collaborated with Tyler to adopt a fully integrated software solution that would allow business owners to interact with offices online — easing staffing needs for the organization and simplifying the entire appraisal and tax process.

Solution

Washington County sought out an efficient filing system that integrated with its existing Assessment & Tax Pro solution. With a new online filing tool, the organization hoped for:

• A simple, convenient way for taxpayers to complete personal property returns
• A paperless workflow to facilitate steps along the property tax lifecycle
• Alignment with its existing data dashboard, allowing administrators to monitor filing status

Years after implementing Assessment & Tax Pro to manage operations, the next ‘win-win’ move was to add Tyler’s SmartFile. Internal team members knew constituents needed an easy, simple, and quick way to interact with the office online to submit a personal property return. And the new online filing solution’s integrated automation would provide county employees from many departments some relief from the annual challenge.

Projecting more than 11,000 personal property accounts eligible for online filing in the upcoming tax year, the county quickly learned how valuable this tool could be for its entire organization. As part of initial community engagement and education, Washington County sent out a letter including a specific PIN and direct URL for accessing the online filing process — a key step to ensure constituent adoption.

Results

The County and constituents are seeing immediate improvements. Now, any information submitted via SmartFile is automatically transferred to the core Assessment & Tax Pro system, reducing the data entry time by roughly 30 minutes per filing versus the previously manual processes. The county has also significantly reduced postage and paper-related costs associated with personal property filings and document storage. Facilitating more efficient business processes and helping to advance Washington County’s organizational goals, SmartFile immediately provided enhanced public services.

“SmartFile has opened our eyes to a lot of possibilities that we can foresee in our operations, not just within personal property, but beyond…” said Nitin Ramnane, business analyst for the county. “I only see great things in the future as far as the continual evolvement of what we do with SmartFile and other Tyler solutions that are available to us.”

As of mid-2023, the county had received nearly 4,500 filings through the online SmartFile solution. That already represents a whopping 40% adoption rate across the county’s eligible online personal property accounts.