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Audit committee examines Tyler Cashiering rollout and utility payment problems
Summary
Committee members reviewed recent updates to the county’s Tyler Cashiering payment module, discussed citizen reports of online-payment failures, and requested utility-billing collection reports ahead of the August meeting.
Committee members spent substantial time on June 2 discussing the county’s deployment of Tyler Cashiering and related utility-payment channels, including citizen self-service and a separate telecashiering module.
Staff told the committee the Tyler Cashiering module is meant to take electronic payments and bank the receipts into batch postings that ultimately flow into the county’s general ledger and accounts receivable. “Tyler Cashiering takes all this money, posts it to a batch, and then it's in the GL and it's in AR,” a staff member explained. The committee was told that cashiering itself is a payments intake function and that detailed collections and delinquency reporting come from the accounts-receivable and utility-billing modules rather than from the cashiering module.
Members raised reports from residents who said they could not complete online payments. Committee members asked staff to identify whether the failures are occurring in the telecashiering payment path or in the citizen self-service portal and to provide specifics (for example, whether the system is refusing particular card types or failing to issue receipts). The committee directed staff to prepare a utilities collection report for review before the Aug. 4 meeting; that report should include aged receivables (30/60/90-day) and clarify whether deposits are being timestamped on receipt or on deposit.
The committee also discussed an anecdote about paper checks that sat un-deposited for multiple weeks. Members expressed concern that delays in deposit prevent the county from earning interest on receipts and complicate reporting: the system can record a received date and a deposit date differently, which affects whether an amount appears as outstanding. Committee members asked staff to research current lockbox or third-party deposit options and to explain the posting process (when checks are recorded in accounts receivable versus when they are deposited).
