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November 22, 2021

Highlights and Key Tips from our 2021 Property Tax Software Summit

We summarize top lessons and insights for managing commercial property taxes from Rethink experts over our two-day, annual summit.
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We recently held our Annual itamlink User Summit on October 28-29, 2021. During the virtual event, we invited our users and customers to connect with their industry peers, fellow itamlink clients, and the Rethink team. We provided hands-on training and introduced new features, modules, and upgrades to the system we’ve made over the year.  

This year, our main goal was to share best practices and new tools for managing the property tax lifecycle in itamlink. We were also excited to demonstrate new features released throughout the year that will help clients make the most of the system to optimize their workflow efficiency.  

With this post, we wanted to highlight some of the key messages shared during our 2021 summit for those who weren’t able to attend (or want to revisit some of the information).  

         

Key Highlights from the 2021 itamlink User Summit

Here’s some of the key insights and lessons covered throughout our summit.  

1. New and Upgraded Tools for Managing Accruals, Documents, and More

Since our last summit, we’ve made many new changes at Rethink Solutions, including rebuilding our Accruals module from ground up, redesigning our data abstraction tool Capture, and launching a new Jurisdiction Manager and Tax Installment Generator.  

A key improvement to our new Accruals module was the introduction of a sync tool, which enables clients to sync forecasts to accruals on demand. Additionally, the module can now take differing jurisdictional periods and automatically map them into your fiscal calendar, simplifying accounting workflows. The updated module can also support multiple accrual methodologies to accommodate with your accrual calendar and internal practices (e.g. 5-4-5, 5-4-4, 4-5-5).

This year, we also redesigned our Capture tool, making it faster and easier to convert paper documents into searchable, editable electronic data. Now, our clients also have increased visibility into the status of document processing with email notifications and on-screen statuses, which can be triggered both when document batches are processing and completed.  

Finally, we were excited to introduce our new Jurisdiction Manager and Tax Installment Generator modules, which enable clients to build comprehensive workflows to generate tax and tax installment records. Additionally, jurisdictional data can be kept up to date using built-in bulk data management tools, including the ability to track and update individual tax years, bill types, and collectors.  

2. Best Practices for Property Tax Management Processes

Along with introducing and demonstrating new tools and features, we hosted sessions dedicated to helping our clients optimize their workflow processes. As forecasting, budgeting, appeals and savings are typically the most common tasks property tax teams work on day to day, we focused on sharing tips and techniques in these areas.  

Forecasting and Budgeting Best Practices

During our forecasting and budgeting session, our Senior Director of Technology stressed the importance of tracking granular details, as this enables more flexibility in future reporting processes. Another key takeaway was to work with data in bulk, as forecasting and budgeting are data-heavy processes that can become error-prone when completed manually.  Bulk data management tools such as itamlink’s Data Manager offers a variety of bulk data tools, including bulk update, bulk insert and bulk export, saving companies from having to manage their data record by record.  

Appeals and Savings Best Practices

Across the board, appeals and savings are some of the biggest areas of focus for property tax teams. A primary concern is ensuring that the tax savings you secure are reflected in annual tax bills. While this may sound obvious, it can be difficult to manage, particularly for multi-property portfolios because of the large volume of records needing to be tracked.  

We discussed the importance of tracking these in a central repository, which can make managing discounts, incentives, and appeal decisions easier. Using itamlink’s updated tax module, refunds can be tracked to ensure you’re not paying more than you should.  


Looking Ahead: Major Goals and Events for 2022

As our itamlink User Summit marks the last of our 2021 networking events, we look forward to upcoming events we have planned.  

Based on popular request, we’ll be hosting our second-annual Experience-Sharing Event in Spring 2022. During this event, we invite panelists from companies using itamlink as well as property tax management experts to share their insights, real-life experiences, and property tax best practices. Throughout the year, we’ll also be hosting monthly webinars, starting off with a two-part series on appeals and assessments in February. (Make sure to subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t miss this popular series!)

And of course, we’ll be again hosting our itamlink User Summit in Fall 2022, where Rethink staff will share new itamlink features and enhancements, along with update on everything Rethink Solutions has accomplished over the year.  

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© 2023 Rethink Solutions. All Rights Reserved
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© 2023 Rethink Solutions. All Rights Reserved