June 2009
It’s now easier than ever for small municipalities to stabilise their revenue streams through efficient accounting and billing. According to Mohammed Mosam, divisional director at Softline Pastel, ordinary accounting systems are unsuitable for municipal use and often lead to financial difficulties in smaller municipalities.
“General multi-purpose accounting solutions are not effective in the municipal environment. Municipalities have too many different types of customers, from commerce and industry to educational and government institutions and individual householders. Often these customers have different billing frequencies - from monthly to annual and, require different services in different ways. Rates and refuse removal for a household and factory are just not the same. The calculations are intricate and beyond the normal scope of a standard accounting system,” said Mosam.
“As soon as these exception calculations are done manually by the municipality’s accounting staff, errors and inefficiencies creep in. More often than not it affects the municipality’s cash-flow. We’ve seen a renewed emphasis on service-delivery from a new, service-oriented government and municipal managers will start looking for ways to improve efficiency.”
The Pastel Evolution accounting suite has a billing module designed specifically for municipalities. The system enables municipalities to improve the accuracy and timeliness of billing and, therefore, substantially improve revenues collection and consumer relationships.
“The Pastel Evolution Municipal Billing solution is affordable for municipalities, whose budgets and resources are more limited than those of the larger metropoles,” says Mosam. Because it drives such a significant improvement in collections capability, the purchase price of the system outweighs the financial benefits it delivers for a municipality over an extremely short space of time. Pastel Accounting systems are also widely used in industry – almost 200 000 companies use Pastel – and the Pastel skills pool is thus huge, making it easier for municipalities to find competent staff.
Running an efficient municipality is not just about billing. Pastel Evolution can also track those all-important municipal fixed and moveable assets, whilst the procurement system module allows municipalities to manage purchase orders and keep control of expenses. “In accordance to the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) which aims to modernise budget, accounting and financial management practices and maximise municipal service delivery, the system has been designed to be extremely flexible and easily adapt itself to the dynamic changes taking place in the public sector”.
Mosam adds that the Pastel Evolution business intelligence module provides accurate record-keeping and easy, but sophisticated analysis and reporting of municipal activities. “All this comes with great municipal transparency and accountability to central and provincial government, treasury and stakeholders. “It’s an exceptional tool all round, for creating efficiency and streamlining internal processes by bringing municipalities into the modern era.”
Several municipalities already run the Pastel Evolution Municipal Billing solution and many more, across South Africa, are looking into implementing the specialised solution. According to Mosam, the locally-developed solution is more affordable than imported systems by a large margin. “We have shown that the monthly savings brought about by switching to Pastel Evolution can pay for extra staff in the department, bringing new levels of efficiency.”