Once a form is submitted, it kicks off a dedicated workflow in IEG4’s RPO engine OpenProcess.
But generally the form:
Sets up the actual Direct Debit Payment Method and Instalment Plan
Adds any contact details for email/phone number to the party completing the form
Adds a notepad entry to explain the updates made E.g.
"Council tax account 12345034 has liable party with surname McMahon Account is active
No notes found to indicate bounced Direct Debits on account 20000527654 for current financial year
Direct debit setup on account 12345034
Contact details updated for person reference 983474"
The Council Tax Direct Debit service is designed to capture information to enable the creation of a new Direct Debit based instalment plan on a council tax account.
General Functionality
The form has the following high-level key functions:
Capture of the citizen’s
name, address, contact details, and
council tax account no.
Capture the citizen's bank details
Including a real-time bank validation check
Capture the frequency/payment day they’d like
Generate a digital direct debit mandate pre-filled with the content provided
Submit the data into the back-office
Submit a copy of the form PDF into the document management/workflow application
Send an email receipt for the form
Send an email containing details of the Direct Debit information for a fully paperless DD - see the link below for details on this:
The power of the IEG4 solution and reason for the high automation levels its customers achieve are in the real-time checks that are built in. These are designed to prevent exceptions and forms being submitted in circumstances where you would not want this to happen.
Prior to submission the Direct Debit form will:
check if the council tax account number entered and the surname/organisation name of the account holder match
retrieve the current recovery stage for the financial year and:
a) compare it with a set of recovery stages where direct debits are not permitted
b) for each recovery stage where it is not permitted it will show a custom, user-defined message/ call to action. E.g. if the account is with an enforcement agent, it could provide their details and how to get in touch with them.
3. check whether the citizen has a history of not paying direct debits once they’ve been set up and where this happens a custom, user-defined message/call to action is presented that informs the citizen of what to do next
4. check for a marker added during this financial year that indicates a citizen has made an arrangement and can bypass checks 3 and 4
5. check in real-time, using the industry-leading online bank verification service from Loqate (GBG Group) that the bank account details are valid prior to form submission. If they are invalid, the citizen is told to check and try again. If they are valid, the details of their bank are retrieved and automatically populated into the Direct Debit Mandate page.
Where OpenProcess is not used as your document management system, the online form is capable of:
Saving the PDF to a file location
Automatically indexing the form document into the document management system based upon the account number and whether the process is fully automated or not.
We can provide integration to the following widely used back-office EDM applications:
Information@Work / NEC DM
Civica W2/360/Comino
Civica Workflow
IDOX
OpenText
ICLipse
IEG4 OpenProcess
Description
DirectDebitType-DirectDebitTypePrevYear
When set to true this allows a customer to select to set up the Direct Debit for a previous year. This is only of relevance when integration is NOT in place.
DirectDebitType-DirectDebitTypeBoth
Any settings you see prefixed with Bava - are related to bank validation for the Direct Debit element and are updated/maintained by IEG4
Beyond the above, for RPO (Integrated forms) there is further localisation available that is set by IEG4. Details found here:
To ensure that you can take a fully paperless Direct Debit approach you need to send details of the Direct Debit to be set up within 3 working days.
To optimise the process and remove legacy approaches of sending physical letters to customers, it is possible to automatically email the customer a letter branded with your council's branding.
We need you, as a part of your implementation to provide us with:
Your council's logo
Your council's name / department / address / contact info
If you go to the Form's Portal upon submission, you can see the DD_letter at the bottom of the Documents list:
An example letter generated looks as follows, with the details from the form automatically being used in the creation of the template:
When set to true this allows a customer to select to set up the Direct Debit for a previous year and current year. This is only of relevance when integration is NOT in place
CTaxAccountMinLength
This allows you to set the minimum length of the account number for the council tax account number field.
CTaxAccountMaxLength
This allows you to set the maximum length of the account number for the council tax account number field
CTaxAccountRegExPattern
This allows the actual format of the council tax account number to be set using a regular expression. E.g. This below says there will be an initial number between 0 and 6. Followed by 11 digits that are 0 to 9.
^[0-6][0-9]{11}$
IntegrationEnabled
When set to true this means the form will integrate to a back office where APIs etc. are available.
Northgate-Domain
Only relevant for NEC
Within NEC there are two elements for a given database. The domain and the system. The domain could be: TEST and the system could be RBTEST.
Northgate-System
Only relevant for NEC
Within NEC there are two elements for a given database. The domain and the system. The domain could be: TEST and the system could be RBTEST.
NorthgateNotepadChapterID
Only relevant for NEC
When adding notes to the notepad to highlight the automated updates one needs to tell our form which notepad chapter.
DirectDebitServiceNumber
This is the 6 digit number for the council's council tax direct debit service.
Email-AccountNumberInSubject
Where there are emails being sent to a back office inbox this will ensure the account number is in the email subject where this is true.
DirectDebitMandateEnabled
Where this is true a dedicated Direct Debit mandate will be added as a page within the form. Pre-populated from the data in the form already.
CustomerDirectDebitLogo
This is the location of the council's Direct Debit logo.
BankAccountHolderNameMaxLength
This is the maximum length of the account holder's name. This setting exists because of the fact that NEC cannot holder name's greater than 20 characters.
ShowWhoAreYouGender
Enables you to turn on/off the gender option.
YearEndEarlyAdjustment
This setting is used to make the form behave, during the end of year period in March, as if it is already in April so that the DD is set up for the new year.
E.g. On March 10th you've run end of year. You want direct debits to be set up only in the new year. Because there are 22 days until first of April, you'd set the setting to 22.
DirectDebit-ConfirmIdentity
When this is set to true a check box is added for the customer to confirm they are legally allowed to set up direct debits etc. for the account.
HideDirectDebitType
If true then the form will not ask whether they want to set up the direct debit for the current year or not. If integrated this should be set to true.
RemoveCallerIdFromInstalmentPlan
If this is set to true then you will need to ensure that you automatically send the customer the Direct Debit confirmation email because this is a fully automated Paperless Direct Debit and NEC will not send the details of the Direct Debit out to the customer if this is true. I.e. the DTI process in NEC will suppress the notification if this setting is set to true.
If set to false then the caller's details will not be in the XML passed to the back office and the standard NEC document will be sent providing details of the Direct Debit.
The automated email containing the Direct Debit is something you can do with our forms. See details later.
ShowConfirmationSignatory
If true the customer will be asked to confirm they are able to sign off direct debits for their account.
ShowWhoAreYouGender
If false, the form will not ask for a person's gender.
ShowPreferredMethodOfContact
If false, the form will not ask for a person's preferred method of contact.
ShowWhoAreYouRelationshipToApplicantTextBox
If true an additional text box will be displayed in the Completed on behalf of section to capture the relationship to the applicant (free text). For Civica this is included in the XML sent to the Council Tax system.
Civica only:
WiderPaymentMethodsEnabled
If true this will enable other instalment plans to also be set up using the form (Cash and Giro)
