Cobot Provides Relief from a Taxing Task

Taxing Task

Our client’s process for assigning the proper jurisdiction codes to questionable taxpayer addresses was a “taxing one”.  Their employees had to go out to multiple websites to look up these questionable addresses to find the correct code for the taxpayer’s county, municipality and / or school district.  Then, they must update the tax information in the taxpayer’s account to match their latest address.  This ensures that the proper jurisdictions receive their tax monies.  It took three employees about 6 hours each day to do the look ups.  These address lookups numbered in the thousands daily during heavy tax times.  And sometimes, these websites were slow during these peak times.

Why is this Tax Task so important?

taxing-task-reliefWhen residents move from one area to another, their earned income tax needs to follow them.  So, correct addresses assure their tax dollars benefit the jurisdiction they live in.  Changing the tax code could also change the tax rate.  This could mean that the resident might not have the correct rate deducted and end up paying additional tax at tax filing time.  Therefore, it is essential to ensure that these questionable addresses get the correct tax code.

Cobot Discovery

Our client’s employees met with BerkOne‘s RPA technicians for a discovery session.  Their employees showed all the steps they took to look up these questionable addresses to find the correct tax code.  Most importantly, they explained the spreadsheets used to track of all these addresses.

Cobot Provides Relief!

Our team developed a co-bot to watch a folder on the client’s site.  When a spreadsheet arrives, the co-bot extracts the addresses row by row, and inputs the address into the websites.  The websites display the appropriate tax data, then the co-bot takes that information and updates the columns on the spreadsheet file.  It will also fill in other tax data if found on the websites.  Once all the address look ups are complete, the co-bot will send out an email to notify the client.  Exceptions occur when the address provided does not result in any tax information.  These exceptions are worked manually.  When the file is totally complete, the client uses it to update the tax codes in their system.

The Result!

The client felt immediate relief! What previously took 30 hours a week was reduced to 12 hours with the co-bot in place.  They started to run their co-bot more often during the peak tax season to keep up with the questionable addresses.  This allowed them to free up several of their employees to focus more on their taxpayer customers.