FIN 2019-04-22 Item 2A - Discussion - Update on New Cashiering System

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City of Tukwila Allan Ekberg, Mayor INFORMATIONAL MEMORANDUM TO: Finance Committee FROM: Vicky Carlsen, Finance Director BY: Aaron Williams, Fiscal Coordinator CC: Mayor Ekberg DATE: April 22, 2019 SUBJECT: Briefing on new cashiering system ISSUE Update the Finance Committee on the implementation of Tyler Cashiering, the new cashiering system for the Finance Department and City Clerk's office. BACKGROUND The point of sale cashiering system used by the Finance Department and the City Clerk's office, Core Cashiering, was purchased and implemented in January 2009, almost ten years ago. In recent years, consideration has been given to purchasing a new cashiering system because the existing system functions slowly and system support and upgrades have been discontinued by the vendor. In June 2018, the need for a new system became more urgent. The Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards became more stringent requiring a more secure encryption protocol — Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 - effective June 30, 2018. Because the Core Cashiering system did not comply with this protocol, a work around was developed by the City's TIS Department to achieve compliance. Under the TIS-developed solution, credit card transactions are processed using a two-step method. First, the credit card payment is processed using an online terminal. Next, the transaction is recorded into the Core Cashiering system by entering the last four digits of the credit card, the credit card expiration date, and the transaction authorization number from the online credit card terminal. This solution solved the immediate problem but proved to be a very time-consuming process. At the November 5, 2018 City Council Regular Meeting, Council authorized the purchase of the new cashiering system, Tyler Cashiering. DISCUSSION Implementation and go -live for Tyler Cashiering was the week of March 11th with the system going live on the morning of Thursday, March 14th. The three days prior to go -live, staff from Finance, City Clerk, TIS and Police worked with the vendor to configure and train on the new system. Tyler Cashiering has an intuitive, user friendly interface which provides a more streamlined experience with a direct integration into Eden, has the ability to run on laptops (in addition to the cashiering stations) and ultimately improves efficiencies. In the past month since implementing the new cashiering system, staff have noticed significant improvements in their processing of transactions, closing & balancing batches as well as reporting and researching transactions within the system.