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To effectively meet the needs of their residents and maintain staff efficiency, governments need solutions that can streamline the entire payment lifecycle, from billing and presentment to payment capture, transaction processing, and financial reporting. Fortunately, recent technological advances have increased the availability of unified payment platforms to simplify once-complex payment processes. As explored in a recent webinar, forward-looking city and county leaders no longer have to choose between meeting the rising expectations of their residents and maintaining back-office efficiency across multiple department-level payment solutions.

The Resident Payment Experience: A Complex Landscape

Payments are the most common way residents interact with government. According to a recent study of government leaders, today’s residents need more expansive payment methods, and the payment systems they interact with should be easier to use when paying one or multiple bill types. A unified payment platform can resolve both issues of accessibility and convenience. 

Take a family moving to a new city or county, for example. From paying property taxes to submitting a request for new utility services to obtaining home alarm permits, they’re required to interact with their local government in a significant way.  The reality in most communities is these interactions take place with separate departments all with their own, disparate payment platforms. As one city official shared, “It can be confusing for constituents about where to make each payment type — a utility payment versus a permit or license payment.” 

The Government Staff Experience: A Tedious and Risky Environment

Challenges with the payment experience extend to government staff as well. In the same survey of local and state government leaders, 35% of respondents said payment systems should be easier for staff to use, and 50% expressed interest in payment platforms that integrate with ERP systems, billing solutions, and other software applications. 

When disparate systems are in place, governments may be faced with these common headaches:

• Deposit discrepancies arise due to conflicting settlement and funding times.
• Multiple software application integrations create exposure to third-party data and increase security risks.
• Separate reconciliation processes across various systems of record complicate auditing and reporting.
• Chargeback and refund processes across different end-user profiles cause inefficiency, money loss, and collections backlog. 
• Auditing and compliance are a resource-intensive task involving multiple vendors with varying PCI DSS and SOC 2 requirements by software and integration type.

As one IT manager shared, “Many agencies report issues with reconciliation not tailored to internal processes. Integration is a key element to obstacles we must overcome, along with feature enhancements and security best practices.” 

A Unified Payment Platform: A Win-Win for Staff and Payers

When it comes to the modernization of payment technology, governments often feel they must prioritize either resident experience or staff efficiency — believing it is too complex, too expensive, or impossible to focus on both simultaneously. Modern technology backed by a trusted, government-experienced vendor allows governments to meet — and exceed — everyone’s expectations.  

In fact, since one growing city chose to adopt a unified, enterprise solution for payments, its payers are benefitting from: 

• A streamlined payer experience.

• Access to modern and digital payment methods.

• Improved customer service.

• Fewer missed payments.

• Streamlined access to payments for business licenses, animal tags, tax records, fire inspection certificates, and more.

• Improved trust and engagement with local government. 

While staff are also reaping rewards, including: 

• Simplified financial reporting and reconciliation, and a single source of truth across the city

• Increased revenue collection and cash flow.

• Streamlined vendor service and support.

• Simplified security and compliance.

• Lower IT costs and greater reliability.

• Improved budgeting and resource investment toward capital projects.

This example – and many others across the country – are proof that a positive staff experience and a positive resident experience can coexist, and modern technology has eliminated the need to sacrifice one for the other. 

Tyler Technologies develops software solutions with an insider’s understanding of the public sector and decades of industry experience. Tyler’s broad solution and product offering empowers you to deliver better and faster assistance to the public — greater transparency and accessibility, sustainable office practices, secure data that’s easy to manage and maintain, and faster results.

Explore how Tyler Technologies’ powerful, scalable government payments solutions manage the entire payments life cycle from bill presentment and transaction processing, to funds settlement, reconciliation, and reporting. We leverage more than 25 years of industry experience to deliver payment solutions that are secure, intuitive, easy to use, and built just for government.