Sign up for one of our upcoming ePermitting Regional Training and User Conferences before they are full! Registration is required.

They are:
        Nov. 13-14 from 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m., hosted by the City of Happy Valley
        Dec. 4-5 from 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m., hosted by the City of Astoria

Attendees will learn about a wide variety of training and discussion topics related to ePermitting. These include: Creating Custom Filters Locally, Conditions of Approval, Activities, Inspections, Basic Ad-Hoc Reporting, Processing Refunds and Other Financial Transactions, Workflow, Advanced Tips and Tricks, and an open question-and-answer session to get the answers you’ve always wanted to know.

We will also schedule conferences in Eastern Oregon and Southern/Central Oregon this coming Spring.
​
For more information and to register, visit https://www.oregonepermitting.com/conferencestraining.html.

We are considering making some additions to the available record types in the Building Module and have created a short survey to gather agency feedback. The deadline to complete the survey is Nov. 22, 2019.

To participate in the survey, please click the link below or copy and paste the entire website address into your web browser.

http://dcbs.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_byo6wFTA8He9nKt

​Thank you for your participation in this important enhancement consideration!

We will be adding a new exceptional “payment” method to the Model effective November 18th called Restore Payment. After much data analysis, it was determined that the Journal Entry payment method was being used for much more than restoring payments voided in error – it then became necessary to break the restoration of a payment voided in error out uniquely so that it could be included in the nightly financial batch where Journal Entry is excluded. This new method now requires a change in how the Journal Entry method is used – these differences are explained below.

Journal Entry: The Journal Entry payment type is will be used to reflect/record a payment that was posted or receipted outside of Accela, such as receipted to a financial software. This payment type is only used to reflect payments made outside of Accela such as with a case where you need to demonstrate that a deposit payment was made to the City/County cashier and receipted in the agency financial system directly. You would process a payment type of Journal Entry for the external payment amount - in the Payer field you will type “Journal Entry Payment” and in the Payment Comment, and as best practice, you would include a brief comment that the payment was made in an external system, the reason, the receipt number from the other system, the payment method, the date posted, and any sort of approval code or check number.

This payment type effectively demonstrates that an external payment was made, and does not show up on your cash balancing but does show in the transactions applied/revenue reports as a result of a payment method being applied to fee items in Accela. The Transactions Applied by Method would show this type of transaction clearly as would the standard Revenue Exceptions Report. Important note: You cannot process a refund on this payment type as it is just a reflection of a payment made outside of Accela, the payment would have to be refunded in the external system it was posted in.

Restore Payment: The new Restore Payment payment type will be used to restore a payment transaction to a record where the payment was voided in error. This payment is only used to restore payments voided in error as the monies were already deposited on a prior date/year/fiscal cycle such as with a 6-month old payment that was accidentally voided today. You would process a payment type of Restore Payment for the voided payment amount – in the Payer field you will type “Restore Payment” and in the Payment Comment, as best practice, you would include a brief comment that a payment was voided in error and is only being restored, and reference information to the original ‘voided’ payment such as original receipt #, payment method, payor, and original posting date.

This payment type effectively restores the original payment transaction, although on current date, and does not show up on your cash balancing but does show in the transactions applied/revenue reports as a result of a payment method being applied to fee items in Accela. The Transactions Applied by Method would show this type of transaction clearly as would the standard Revenue Exceptions Report. Important note: Restore Payment should only be used to restore ‘Cash’, ‘Check’, ’Credit Card’, ‘Fund Transfer’, ‘Internal Transfer’ and ‘Refund Check’ payment types. Using it to restore other exceptional payment types to include ‘Credit Memo’, ‘Fee Waiver’, ‘Write Off’ and ‘Billed’ will not appear correctly on reports and cause financial issues. You cannot process a refund on this payment type as no cash was currently exchanged/paid – you are only restoring the transactional payment record.

To refresh on the other available Exceptional Payment Types, check out the Knowledgebase article Payment Processing Cases and Types.

​• City of Cannon Beach – Go live Spring of 2020
• City of St. Helens – Go live Spring of 2020
• Redmond Public Works – Go live 2020
• Lake Oswego (conversion to OSM) – Go live 2020
• City of Phoenix – Go live 2020

When submitting a ticket because you are experiencing slowness or an issue, please include the following information in your ticket. This will allow us to provide the necessary information to Accela helping them to more quickly pinpoint the issue.
​

• Which Accela page were you on when you started having slowness and/or issues?
• Have you tried troubleshooting already (clearing cache, logging out then back in, etc.)?

Currently, we have 4 servers and occasionally it will be a single server that is the issue. To help us narrow down which server(s) may be affected, please open a new tab in the same browser session as your current Accela session, and enter the following link into your address bar: https://av.prod.oregon.accela.com/portlets/version.jsp - the below will be displayed:

​Please let us know which server is showing for you. You can find that information on the server line of the version page from the above link.
Additionally, you can try logging out of your current browser session and then back in to a new browser session until you are able to work successfully. Logging out then back in several times may get you logged into a better performing server as the server assignment is random.

​What are the limitations in naming sets? Because set names are stored in the database and these names are used to retrieve information about the sets, special characters like ‘&’, ‘%’, ‘-‘, ‘()’, single quotes (‘) and double quotes (“) should not be used. These characters have special meaning in the programming languages used to develop reports. When these special characters are used, the reports will often fail. Please take note the next time you are creating a new set in the system.