Set up fees

You can configure the ability for agencies to collect fees associated with a record online. This feature enables public users to access their records and view its associated fees. Public users can group records together in a shopping cart, and pay for the fees in the cart from their computer. If Citizen Access is configured to do so, public users can conveniently pay for those fees with a credit card or eCheck. This section provides indications to help you determine how you want to implement online fees and a consolidated list of configurations to implement functionality. For more information on fees, refer to Set up fees and the “Fee Setup” chapter in the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide.

Decide how to implement online fees

Before implementing fees in Citizen Access, review the list of decision making design considerations to ensure your configurations meet the requirements for your agency.

Note: For successful setup, use both this list of implementation decisions together with the checklist of core configurations as explained in Configure required online fee settings.

  • Do you want Citizen Access fees to be automatically calculated and assessed by fee indicators or scripts? Refer to the “Fee Setup” section in the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide. See also Enable fees for online functionality.

  • Do you want the users to determine fees by data input, such as QTY? Refer to the “Fee Setup” chapter in the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide. See also Enable fees for online functionality.

  • Do you want a combination of auto-assess and user data entry? See Enable fees for online functionality. See also “Fee Setup” chapter in the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide.

  • Define payment process/provider for fee collection.

  • PayPal PayflowPro, Official Payments, Official Payments Cobrand+ and so on. Refer to both the “Payment Processing” chapter in the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide and the integration package Epay SDK.zip. Contact Accela Customer Support for assistance in obtaining the integration package.

  • Does your agency provide a report for receipts and permits? See Reporting.

  • Does your agency want to offer shopping cart functionality? See Configure shopping cart.

Configure required online fee settings

Online fee configurations provide public users to access their records, view the associated fees, group records together in a shopping cart, and pay for the fees in the cart from their computer. The implementation of online payment processing allows public users to use a credit card or a debit card to pay for the associated fees online. This section provides implementation questions and required configuration steps for online fee setup. The configuration of online payment processing requires additional documentation for configuration. Refer to the integration package Epay SDK.zip. Contact Accela Customer Support for assistance in obtaining the integration package.

It is recommended best practice to implement the record creation functionality by using this checklist together with Fees and online payments and the integration package Epay SDK.zip. Also see the “Payment Processing” chapter in the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide.

Implement online fee functionality on your site

  1. Define fee setup configurations, including fee-items, fee-schedules, and payment periods. See the “Fee-Setup” chapter in the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide.

    Verify ACA configurations for fee-items are set and enabled for ACA. See Enable fees for online functionality.

  2. If necessary, enable Fee Estimation.

    Enable Function Identification Fee Estimation. See Enable fee estimation.

  3. Define record type configurations. Assign a fee code to the application type. See Configure record types in Civic Platform in Civic Platform.

  4. Configure the ACA_CONFIGS standard choice with the NO_SAVEANDRESUMELATER Standard choices value. The value description options are the module names that you want to exclude from Partial Record functionality, such as buildings, licenses, enforcement.

    For information on configuring the standard choice, refer to the Accela Civic Platform Configuration Reference.

  5. Enable fees for invoices. See Enable fees for online functionality.

    • Auto-invoice

    • Assess the fee by script or by fee indicators

  6. Write the event scripts.

    The Standard field created by ACA set to Yes can be queried in your script making.

    For a list of scripts available in ACA, refer to “ACA” of the Appendix A: Accela Engineering Event Scripts.

  7. Define ASI fields and ASI tables. See Application-specific information.

    Create and enable fields for ACA. You can also configure the Expression Builder for fields. For configuration details, refer to the “Expressions Builder” chapter in the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide.

    For configuration details, refer to “Managing Application Specific Information” section in “Application Management” of the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide.

  8. Enable functionality on the Feature settings page. See Feature setting configurations.

  9. Customize web pages related to online fee functionality. For customization steps, see Web pages.

    • Customize the following web pages located in the Create an application folder in the Pages area for a module.

      • Pay fees

      • Receipt

    • Customize the following web pages located in the Obtain a fee estimate folder in the Pages area map for a module.

      • Fee estimate summary

  10. If necessary, configure the deletion of partially completed applications to remove associated fees. For configuration details see Delete partially completed applications.

  11. Configure payment processing for the third-party payment provider.

    Refer to the “Payment Processing” chapter in the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide, and for back-end setup, see the integration package Epay SDK.zip. Contact Accela Customer Support for assistance in obtaining the integration package.