Update 09/03/2023: Please note when utilising the following link \\MVS252\Workflow360 Shortcuts - you have to copy it here and then paste it into the address bar at the top of the page where you view your documents (the place you would access Y Drive). If you have any queries please pass via your Senior in the first instnace.

We have been advised this afternoon that W2 is being upgraded to the latest version (D360). Civica will, this weekend, be moving Moray Council to D360, the replacement for W2. New servers will also be coming on-line.

In order to facilitate this, ALL users must have signed out of W2 by 17:00.

Unfortunately due to the restricted time scale ICT will not have D360 application on TMC Apps in time for Monday's go live. As a workaround, affected staff who need access to D360 will be sent a link via email to get access for Monday (20/02/2023)

OPEN-Revenues access is unaffected by this requirement.

D360 performs largely in a similar manner to W2, but in order to ensure that users are fully aware of the main changes that have occurred Allan and Dawn have pulled together a wee explanation of the main functionality changes that have occurred, link below.

D360 Guide

If you have any questions about any aspect of this guide or encounter any difficulties using any aspect of D360, please pass via your senior in the first instance.

16/03/2023 – Due to the increase in call volumes to the Council Tax/Revenues line (01343 563456) as a result of the issuing of 2023 annual Ctax bills, the following message has been added to be played to customers calling this line:

“Due to the issuing of Annual Council Tax bills, we are currently receiving a high number of calls. If you are contacting us to enquire about changes you reported to us which are not yet showing on this bill, have you considered emailing your enquiry to us at revenues@moray.gov.uk, when emailing us, please include your full name, any relevant addresses with post-codes and if possible Council Tax reference numbers, thank you.”

It is anticipated that this message will remain on the Revenues line until 10/04/2023 at the earliest, however, we will keep a check on calls and leave it on longer if necessary. Kindest regards, Donna (CC Team Leader)

Update 14/03/2023: We have now received confirmation from printers that 2023 CTX paper bills are being released to the Royal Mail today. These will begin to be delivered tomorrow, with the bulk of them being delivered on Thursday (this is their date of issue).Total passed to the Post Office was 41767.

In addition to the Council Tax bills, approx 2200 Housing Benefit notification letters were issued today, and tomorrow another 200 paper notifications will be issued, and 600 notification letters will be sent by email.

Council tax bills show the amount of Council Tax Reduction on them. As per previous years Council Tax Reduction notification letters are not being issued

Update 09/03/2023: Just to confirm that following the completion – and addition to the LA’s website – of the 2023 CTX explanatory leaflet, billing have commenced the issue of 2023 CTAX e-Bills to CTAX payers. Almost 3,600 bills will be issued (which is 8.1% of the total bills to be sent). This will be completed today.

UPDATE 06/03/2023: 2023 Council Tax annual billing has been successfully completed. All paper bills have been submitted to the printers. E-bills are ready to be issued, and these will be sent when the explanatory leaflet is in place. This means that you can sign-out of OPEN-Revenues TRAIN and access OPEN-Revenues LIVE, where you will see the 2023 bills. You may also recommence the input of amendments to OPEN-Revenues LIVE.

UPDATE 01/03/2023: Although the final charges have not been published yet, please note that a news item has been put onto the Moray Council website advising of a 5% increase in Council Tax to come. See news article here.

As further information about figures is made available to us, we will update this post.

Update 15:30: Please be advised the confirmation of the 2023 CTax charges are now available to view here.

UPDATE 01/03/2023: Due to illnesses with the Taxation team, it will be necessary to bring forward today’s OPEN-Revenues closedown to 13:00. Please ensure you are signed out at this time. 13:15: A copy of the OR-LIVE data base ACOD on 28 February is available on OR-TRAIN. You should refer to it with care and do not attempt to update it.

Access to OPEN-Revenues will be withdrawn from most users at 14:00, Wednesday 1 March to permit commencement of processes for the production of the 2023 Council Tax bills. Users must have signed out of OPEN-Revenues by this time.

A copy of the OPEN-Revenues database will be taken after close-of-business on 28 February. It will be made available to users via the link to the OPEN-Revenues TRAIN database, and users will be made aware of when it is accessible. This will be a display-only database which will not be updated and is only available for reference purposes. Users must not attempt to update it.

Access to D360 remains unaffected by this work. SWF and DHP online forms will be available when this work is being undertaken.

It is envisaged that full-access to OPEN-Revenues LIVE will be restored to all users around midday on 6 March. We will advise users when they can access it.

The Council Tax Open Portal has been removed from the myaccount site until further notice to allow for annual billing to take place. It will be around a week before it can be reinstated. A notice of unavailability has been placed on the portal for customer information. We will advise as soon as this is back up and running for customer use. Update 08/03/2023: The portal is now available again for customer use.

Please see NDR FAQ Annual Billing 2023 for information on this years NDR Annual Billing.

04/04/2023 – Access to OPEN-Revenues has now been restored to all users. CTAX, Benefits and SD have been rolled forward into 2023 and processing on them may recommence. The team are preparing for NDR 2023 billing and roll forward so NO AMENDMENTS must be made to NDR.

31/03/2023 – ICT have advised that the Council Tax Open Portal, which is the customer's online access to their council tax information/bills, has been taking off line while they do year end processes. They are unsure how long this will be down but will let us know when the work has been complete and the portal is back up.

Any questions, please pass via your Senior in the first instance

The Taxation Team have advised access to LIVE and Read-Only OPEN-Revenues will be withdrawn from all users at 17:00 today to permit all databases to be rolled forward to 2023 mode.

Please ensure you have signed out by 17:00.

The roll-forward jobs will take approximately one day to complete, so there will be NO ACCESS to OPEN-Revenues on Monday 3 April.

It is envisaged that access will be restored on Tuesday 4 April but it is not possible to confirm at this point when this will occur. We will update you once the system is accessable again.

While the ‘Roll-Forward’ is being performed, access to W360 and SWF and DHP forms will be unaffected.

If you have any questions, please pass to your senior in the first instance

A reminder to all that take payments - a payment can still be made for Council Tax even if the number does not pre-populate the information in Pay360 - as long as you have the account number and the amount they are looking to pay.

Please be advised that Lyn Main will be on leave on Thursday 16th March 2023 and will not be back until Tuesday 21st March 2023. No-one will be available in Welfare Benefits on these days.

Please note that the extensions currently detailed in the script for transferred to SWF (3491, 3610 and 3667) are no longer in use. The team are in the Annexe on a rotational basis, but are not using the phones.

If there is a need for one of the team to call someone then an email should be sent to awards@moray.gov.uk it will be picked up from there and the return call made.

A Change Request has been logged to update the script, but please follow this guidance until the script has been updated to reflect.

Please be advised Taxation have been in touch regarding the weekly 3/3/23 and monthly 5/3/23 council tax direct debit tapes. Due to an error on the banking side, these have been called for early and have debited customers’ bank accounts today instead of this coming Friday/next Monday.

This is currently being looked at by Payments as to how we deal with the error and also subsequent phone calls from customers regarding bank charges.

The banking team are in a meeting at the moment – more to follow as soon as we have an update.

UPDATE 03/03/2023: ICT have investigated this issue at length and can confirm that although duplicate files were imported, no transactions were accepted from the duplicate files in question and so were rejected and removed from the main transaction processing. No duplicate payments were taken from customers.