HOT SPRINGS — All Hot Springs city business transactions starting noon Friday through the end of the day on July 28 will be restricted to cash or check only.
Karen Scott, the city’s finance director, said the current utilities billing system, New World, will be shut down at noon Friday. Although information will still be viewable, no transactions will be able to be entered until after the transition to BS&A is completed.
All computer systems will be offline, and all transactions will be done manually, Scott said by email. All transactions will have to be done with cash or check because no credit card payments can be taken by any of the city’s departments during that time. Receipts will be handwritten.
“Customers will still transact with us,” Scott said last month. “It’ll just be manual. We’ll write hand receipts, if they so desire, to pay by cash or check.”
Utilities customers whose payment is drafted from their bank each month, who account for about 54% of approximately 37,000 utilities customers, will not be affected. No online utilities payments will be able to be taken after the old system goes offline.
Mara Harper, the city’s utilities billing services director, said Wednesday that there are different systems for bank drafts and credit cards. New World, which is run by Tyler Technologies, handles all credit card payments, while bank drafts are handled in-house by city employees.
All bank drafts scheduled to come out between Friday and July 28 will be sent to the bank to be drafted before Friday, but “they will not draft until their due date,” Harper said.
“That’s why bank drafts still continue to work because we have control over those, and the banks know, just like on holidays and weekends, we send it before their due date, and then the bank sets it up to take it out on the due date,” she said.
Once the new system is active, utilities customers wishing to pay online or have their payment drafted will be required to register with the new system.
“We tried nine ways from Sunday to not have to do that because we have somewhere around 20,000 customers who are enrolled in automatic payment,” Scott said in June.
Harper said in June that customers’ billing dates should not change due to the transition. The bills will look the same, but the phone number and webpage customers will use to make payments will be different, she said.
Utilities shutoffs will be suspended for an unspecified time during and after the transition to allow customers a grace period to get their payments in.
The city’s 10-year contract with New World and Tyler Technologies ended earlier this year, and the new system will allow all city business to be consolidated into a single system that “functions more efficiently,” Scott said in June.
The city’s engineering department moved to BS&A almost a year ago, which provided the ability for property owners and contractors to apply for permits, schedule inspections and pay their fees online.
