Ducharme Property Revenue Manager

DUCHARME PROPERTY REVENUE MANAGER

The Ducharme Property & Revenue manager solution is an online system to assist municipalities and other public sector entities with the completeness of their revenue base and the accuracy of information thereof.

ONLINE GIS-BASED SYSTEM WITH CONSOLIDATED PROPERTY & SPATIAL INFO

The web-based solution integrates and overlays property & revenue data sets to ensure completeness of land parcels:

• Surveyor-General’s land parcel data inside the municipal cadaster
• linked with Deeds data,
• the consumer billing database and
• valuation roll.

This integrated solution is to assist entities to ensure all billable revenue is billed to ensure that service delivery can be support through increased cash flow as well as general management support, especially in consideration of audit disclaimers issued by the AGSA on the incompleteness of revenue. The objective of the system is:

• Provide complete & accurate revenue data
• Increase revenue potential
• Improved cash flows

System benefits include:

• Real-time information access.
• GIS / spatial based system with linked property & financial info
• Key exception reports are run across the integrated data sets to identify shortcomings and/or anomalies within the data
• Dashboard overviews
• Tailored Access control
• Cost-effective as it requires no additional hardware

CONTINOUS REVENUE MANAGEMENT

In support of continuous revenue management, the value of the integrated data set is the ability to:

• validate datasets (internal vs external data);
• Provide summaries, mismatch and exception reports for investigation and analysis;
• To provide real-time data and gap analysis reports for investigation (with full audit trail)
• Allows for incremental update of the various datasets (up to date and trackable).

The solution also provides for a GIS analysis tool which creates maps with layers to display the various datasets spatially. When the various attribute data is linked to the spatial data, additional layers are generated to display linked and non-linked land parcels. The tool allows for real-time reporting summaries, together with data overlay upon spatial information:

INTEGRATED INFORMATION SETS

Our system is developed following a proven methodology that has been used on several Revenue Management & Enhancement projects in the past. Our focus is on providing accurate and up-to-date information (spatially linked database integrated with the Deeds information, Valuation and Billing Data) to allow for the making of informed decisions. As to accurate and up-to-date information, the rule of “garbage in, garbage out” applies to this. If the base data is not up to standard, reporting may be inaccurate or lead to a poor Revenue Enhancement Strategy. Key data sets for integration include:

DATA SET 1: TITLE DEEDS

The Deeds Office is the custodian of property information in South Africa. Having updated Deeds information is crucial to a successful Revenue Enhancement Project. In recent years, it has become more difficult to obtain Deeds Information in a usable format from the Deeds Office, which led to our conversion system that can process the raw Deeds Information into a useable format. Deeds information forms the prime foundation of property and owner information for municipal Revenue considerations. As such, we create a reflective database of current property details and ownership.

DATA SET 2: SPATIAL / CADASTRAL LINKING

By spatially referencing information you have the ability to identify areas where revenue is being lost due to inaccurate or non-existent billing. We have built a complete dataset of all land parcels in South Africa based on the cadastral data being provided by the Surveyor General office. This allows us to link any property in South Africa to an exact spatial coordinate. The information is updated every six months. This is done for two reasons. One is to provide a physical location for the property and the second is to identify gaps or possible errors in the Deeds information. We create a spatially linked database for each property. During this process, we will also identify and correct where properties do not have a corresponding spatial component.

DATA SET 3: VALUATION LINKING

Property valuations are an important revenue stream for municipalities as this allows you to charge the relevant rates and taxes based on the value of a property. It is vital not only to have a valuation record for every property in your jurisdiction but also to have an accurate and up-to-date valuation record for every property. The Valuation information is then linked to each property. Key control is to ensure all properties in the jurisdiction have a corresponding valuation record.

DATA SET 4: BILLING LINKING

As with valuation information accurate and up-to-date billing information also forms an important part of successful revenue management for municipalities. This allows you to maximize your revenue per property by charging and collecting for all the services provided to a specific property. Lastly the Billing Information to a property. Upon completion of this step, the bulk of property records will have several billing records attached to it. As with the valuation linking, properties who do not have a billing record attached to it, this will be manually rectified later in the process.

DATA CORRECTION & IMPROVEMENT

Once data is linked and cleansed, exception reports are run to identify areas for follow-up.

SYSTEM EXCEPTION REPORTING

It is vital to have accurate reporting on property & revenue information. Our system allows for key exception reports being run across the integrated data sets to identify shortcomings and/or anomalies within the revenue/property data, which include:

• Properties not linked to the cadastral/spatial information;
• Properties with no valuation record;
• Properties with no billing records;
• Valuation records with no billing records;
• Properties on the valuation roll where the value is lower than the last sale price.

AUDIT TRAIL

Through all these processes, active audit trails and audit logs are kept for all changes on the system.

For more information

For a tailored quote on the system and / or any support related hereto, please contact us.

For more information, please refer to our Property & Revenue Management brochure link.

For tailored solutions or a quote, please contact:

– Daniel Erasmus on derasmus@ducharmeconsulting.co.za or 0722 58 1245.

– Philip Malan on pmalan@ducharme.co.za or 079 779 7774