On June 23^rd, 2014 the Sparks City Council approved  the Interlocal Cooperative Agreement establishing the Regional Business License and Permits Program for the City of Sparks, City of Reno, Washoe County, and the Washoe County Health District. The Accela Regional Coordinating team (ARC) has continued to work cooperatively in their approach to the Accela regional platform and has identified a key issue over the last 5 years that has been detrimental to the goal of providing customers ease of use in a one stop shop service.

Credit card payments received from customers must be handled by a payment processor, which is a third party vendor who manages the transaction between the merchant (City of Sparks) and the financial institutions involved. (Visa, Mastercard, Discover) Currently, most payment processors using standard software are unable to communicate and relay information between Accela and the processor.  This has resulted in daily transaction verification, reporting issues, incomplete or incorrect payments received as well as errors in transactions that Accela is unable to troubleshoot or correct. City staff currently spends approximately 16-20 hours per week attempting to resolve payment issues within the ACA platform.

Since ACA went live on October 31st, 2016, there have been approximately 7700 business licenses and permit applications processed on line through ACA, 3700 of them occurring since September of 2018.  With the push towards online transaction processing from the public, communication between the payment processor and Accela is crucial.

In March, 2019 Washoe County released an request for proposal (RFP) for a full solution payment processor.  While the RFP did not receive the response desired, Gray Quarter submitted a proposal for a stand-alone software solution that would resolve payment errors within ACA regardless of the payment processor used. Gray Quarter provided a demonstration of how their software would not only eliminate payment errors, but would also provide the jurisdictions the ability to customize payment screens and provide a more efficient reporting system. Gray Quarter will also allow each jurisdiction to use different payment processors if desired and enables each jurisdiction to choose to absorb fees or pass them thru to the customer.

The ARC team recommends Gray Quarter as the best overall solution on a regional level. The City of Sparks' cost for a 3 year contract that will run parallel with the proposed payment processor is $31,764 which includes a one-time implementation fee of $3,750 and an annual fee of $9,338.

The addition of Gray Quarter will provide a more user friendly payment experience for customers utilizing ACA when completing business license or permit transactions online.  Gray Quarter will work with the payment processor directly to develop and host a custom shopping cart within the ACA portal that will continue to allow customers to pay with both eChecks and credit/debit cards while ensuring all transactions are processed and posted correctly within Accela.  The integration between Gray Quarter, Accela and the payment processor will also increase accounts receivable and customer service staff efficiency as they will no longer be spending time researching payment errors and balancing discrepancies.

1. City Council may approve the proposed contract as outlined by staff

2. City Council may reject the proposed contract and provide direction to the City Manager

I move to approve a 3 year contract (AC-5611) with Gray Quarter, Inc. to provide interface development, implementation and maintenance of integration services between the payment processor and Accela Citizen Access in an amount not to exceed $31,764