A presenter for the Structural Pest Control Board said the board’s new WDO (wood‑destroying organism) reporting system went live at 09:00 and walked participants through logging into Connect, filing activities and managing accounts. The session included a live demonstration, a question‑and‑answer period and troubleshooting guidance for users getting started.

The presenter confirmed an unplanned outage occurred earlier in the morning but was rapidly restored and is under investigation. To give industry time to catch up from the outage, the board suspended the 10‑business‑day filing requirement for activity reports for the period starting with the outage on Oct. 17 through Nov. 30. "So the downtime will not count towards your 10 day filing requirement," the presenter said.

Why it matters: the new system centralizes WDO filing into the state licensing portal (Connect), migrates account balances and unsubmitted activities from the old system, and changes how companies manage branch‑level and principal (PR) filings. Board staff emphasized the migration of prior records: account balances, transactions and unsubmitted activities were carried over to users’ unsubmitted activity queues in the new system.

Key features and user guidance: the demo showed how to click the green WDO activity button in Connect, choose "manage activities," add single activities or upload the same text‑file format used in the old system, and resolve duplicate detections flagged by a stop‑sign icon. Submitted batches produce a submittal number and a downloadable PDF summary that includes prior balance, number of activities and current balance. The presenter noted the search tool returns two years of history and recommended using activity date (inspection/completion date) rather than transaction date (submittal date) to locate missing reports.

Payments and notifications: users can add funds with Visa, MasterCard or Discover; the presenter demonstrated adding $1,000 as an example and said a 2.3% service charge applies to card transactions. Mail‑in checks and money orders remain accepted; staff asked that mailed checks include the WDO account deposit form, "WDO" and the PR number in the memo and be made payable to the Structural Pest Control Board and sent to the Evergreen Street Sacramento address.

Account linking and admin access: company owners must link accounts using the company tax ID or generate a one‑time code for admin staff. Each admin must have a separate Connect account and use the one‑time code (valid 24 hours) to link; admin accounts receive limited privileges (they cannot generate further one‑time codes). If a business wants branch‑level reporting preserved, files that include branch numbers must be uploaded under the corresponding branch account; otherwise firms can choose to file all branch activity under the principal registration.

Support, recordings and next steps: staff posted user guides and prior town‑hall recordings to the board’s website and said today’s recording will be published in about a week. Board staff invited users to an additional town hall on Tuesday, Nov. 25 at 2 p.m. to demo areas attendees reported trouble with and to answer follow‑up questions. For individual issues, staff asked participants to call or email for targeted help.

The Structural Pest Control Board said IT will continue investigating the outage cause while monitoring performance and helping users transition; the board will maintain the blackout suspension through Nov. 30 to allow filers time to complete backlog items.