Recently Toowoomba City Council approached Gripon Australia to help automate its cash receipting. The task set was to receipt different types of notices, such as rates notices and dog registrations, without the need for the operator to manually key the data into the computer system.
The traditional way of achieving this is to have the software vendor make the necessary changes to the software and then use a traditional barcode reader to scan in the data.
The cost of making these software changes particularly on large software systems can be time consuming and expensive.
“We provided specially programmed barcode readers to recognise the differences in the barcodes for each type of notice,” said Ces Luscombe, Managing Director, Gripon Australia.
“We used the barcode provided for Australia Post. Differences were identified and we then told the barcode reader how we wanted it to transmit the data. In some cases this involved actually extracting data, rearranging it and also inserting data. As well as this, we also included the tab and enter characters to go between fields.”
The end result is that the Toowoomba City Council is now able to more efficiently receipt different notice types, use the barcode scanner to complete the notice type, account number and amount fields automatically without any software modifications to computer systems.
“We believe the barcode readers are a cost effective solution in increasing receipt processing efficiency,” said Shayne Morris, Council’s Projects Officer Revenue. “Gripon Australia pre programmed the equipment to suit our current software. When we received the equipment, it was as simple as ‘plug it in and away you go’.”
For the average cost of less than $300 per barcode reader plus a small programming charge this has proved to be a very cost effective solution for Council.
“These same programmable features can be used if the library wanted to change software systems and was told to change their barcode labels on all the books,” Ces Luscombe said. “We can programme the reader to modify the data to match the format required by the new software, thereby saving much work. If the data entry is done by the keyboard and the changeable data is in the barcode then, it is most likely, we can come up with a workable solution.”
* Copy supplied by Gripon Australia.
Click here to vist the Gripon web site.
For further information call Ces Luscombe at Gripon Australia 1800 24 2548.
