[Andrew Butcher]

Hi Dave

No worries, not taking this personally but there a number of us that have taken a lot of our own time to prepare and support our colleagues with what the government has mandated through legislation. The forum has been created to improve and elevate the general knowledge of rating and revenue raising functions.

I feel your frustration and on behalf of the sector we are working on solutions to help councils work through the steps to get to the classification file. And have also spent a lot of time collaborating with the government to reduce the impost on councils through negotiations on the data requirement in the Manual. It could have been much more difficult.

We have also found many links to data sources that the government agreed to include in the Manual to help find the classification information in your area.

Also, we have been in contact with the three main software vendors (Tech1, Pathway and Authority) and will continue to seek any assistance from them in providing support, at this stage the process does not need vendor intervention at a council level. There are three highly skilled Tech1 software users on the workgroup who have spent many personal hours working on a solution, they have also been in touch with the vendor.

The council representatives have all agreed that the best solution is to conduct all processes in the data files provided by Revenue NSW. To be clear, this will require system interrogation and extraction of data so matching can be conducted within the excel spread sheet. Accordingly, the VG data will require PID matching as step one, step two will require classification data to be stored against the VG data file and this will form the basis of your return file.

We have tested some suggested processes and the Tech1 support council completed 95% within 2-days using desktop analysis.

Agreed on the time it has taken and the short turnaround, however you need to remember that the data is based on your best efforts to complete classifications. LGNSW will be taking this short turn-around up with the Treasurer however formal extensions have not been negotiated at this stage.

I hope this finds you well and has helped with your concerns at this stage.

Regards,
Andrew