Maine Municipal Tax Collectors' & Treasurers' Association
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Posted by Dave Little, Bangor, May 22, 2009:

Here in Bangor our office hours are 8:00 to 4:30 Monday through Friday and we are open that entire time for all customers regardless of the type or number of transactions being processed.  So at times we have a customer come in a 4:25 with several vehicles or boats and we process all their transactions and end up paying extra hours or overtime to my staff.  We do our cash ups in the mornings unless there is a line of people waiting at the door and then some days the cash ups do not get done until the next day.

I was wondering how other towns handle these situations.  I know I have seen and heard that some towns will not process certain types of transactions after a certain time or the office closes to customers so the cash ups and other work can get finished.

Any information you could provide would be helpful. While I am a strong supporter of customer service we seem to be having these situations more and more lately and it is a detriment to the City by having to pay extra wages and us not getting the deposits to the bank in a timely manner.

Responses:We're not nearly your size, but we're open similar hours (we close at 4PM, 6PM on Thursday, so we can try to make it to the bank before closing time).  The staff gets a full hour at lunch in return for the understanding that if they run a bit late on the cashups, so be it and it's not considered extra time worked.  Usually we try to start the cashup process just prior to closing, but for the last minute customer, we are likely to just hold onto the transaction and enter it the first thing next day – similar to banks.  We try to be as accommodating to customers as possible.  No written rules, but common courtesy and common sense seems to prevail at the counter. (Stu Marckoon, Lamoien)

Our office hours in Gouldsboro are M,T,TH,F 8am-4pm and Wed. 8am-6pm.  Hourly employees take one hour lunch and rarely will work over 37 hours a week.  Once in awhile they will stay until 4:15 but we budget for 40 hours a week so it is always covered.  We encourage folks with new vehicles to come into the office 1/2 hour before closing (we are a full MV service town).  On occassion people come in later and we try to accomodate them.  We cash up every day between 3pm and 3:30, do the final audit (Trio System) and log any transactions after that in the system and cash them out with the next day's work.  It works very very smoothly but we are not nearly as large a community as you are.  (Eve Wilkinson, Gouldsboro)

We here in SoPo are also open 8-4:30, and till 6:30 on Thursdays. We do a "split day" here for cash ups, which means the clerks close their window and cash up one at a time during the afternoon, and go on the next day. We're on Trio for cars, so when they cash they "close Teller" on Trio.  That closes that tellers work, and everything they do after that closeout will be on the next days report.  We're on Munis for cash receipting, so they close their batch at the same time and then open a new batch.  This is pretty much how banks work their teller lines.   It works very well.  We also wait on all customers who come in by 4:30.........BUT... when people ask what our hours are we tell them we only process purchases until 4pm and till 6pm on Thursdays.  This does cut down on last minute customers.  I also explain to customers that we don't have overtime in our budget, so we appreciate them being here by 4:15 ........also remind them to reregister online both boats and cars.  Please call me Dave if you'd like to hear more about this process.  We're an extremely busy office and this really works for us.  (Sue Borelli, South Portland)

Here in Machias we are in the office from 8:30-4:00 Monday through Friday.  We open the doors to the public at 9:00.  We are open through lunch so we usually just sit at our desks and eat our lunch while we wait on customers.  New registrations are processed until 3:45 and our cash out is done between 3:30 and 3:45.  This system seems to work very well for us and we are usually out of the office no later than 4:05. (Sandra Clifton, Machias)