Portage tax and records software company lands big California account

Santa Barbara County in California collects $614 million in property taxes each year. The systems it used to make those collections were more that 30 years old.

When it sought a solution to consolidate as many of its existing systems as possible and replace them with a single system Santa Barbara decided to go with Manatron, based in Southwest Michigan’s Portage.

Santa Barbara county treasurer-tax collector Bernice James says it was critical for the county to move its important tax functions off its existing mainframe platform.

The County was concerned its staff could no longer support its aging programs and there were inefficiencies caused by the old system. Technical and legislative updates were difficult to implement, multiple data entry points increased time spent on transactions and the creation of reports had become quite cumbersome.

Santa Barbara County liked Manatron because it has been working with California counties since the early 1990s to learn the needs of California assessors, treasurer-tax collectors and auditor-controllers. The company designed and marketed a new integrated system called GRM. The system has been used successfully in Santa Cruz, Calif.

Santa Barbara County has approximately 430,000 residents and 128,000 parcels of property.

Manatron, a privately-held company provides software and services for state and local governments that allows them to assess real and personal property, and to bill and collect the related property taxes in their jurisdictions. The company has offices throughout the United States.

Manatron currently serves more 1,400 customers and manages approximately 40 million parcels of property.

Over the last 40 years its software has helped government jurisdictions collect over $1 trillion dollars in revenue.

Writer: Kathy Jennings
Source: Rachel Bryant, Manatron