The move to a new software system has caused a few queries from Whakatāne ratepayers around a changed layout of rates invoices over the past month.

Whakatāne District Council is shifting to a new enterprise resource planning system – the centralised software platform organisations use to integrate and manage core operations.

It has allocated $4.25 million in internal-loan funding to the programme of work, with the software being phased in over two years.

The former system, Ozone, is being replaced by Datascape, created by New Zealand's largest information technology consultancy, Datacom, used by most councils in New Zealand, including Kawerau and Ōpōtiki district councils.

Ozone was developed in the 1990s and has been unable to be updated to meet new central government requirements or transition to cloud-based information storage and sharing. It was also in danger of becoming a security risk.

The latest quarterly report on the transition said the latest part of the software package to be phased in was that used to manage finance, property and rates.

This was implemented on July 3, in time for the release of rates notices.

The software included anything

to do with finance including accounts payable and receivable and banking.

The report said following the release of rates notices, the customer services team received queries from customers about the changed layout.

A previous phase implemented last year had been around customer relationship management which improved how residents could report issues to the council.

This included the introduction of the Antenno app, which people can download onto their cellphones to receive notifications relevant to where they live and report issues.

As of July 28, there had been 992 Antenno app downloads for Whakatāne district.

The third phase of implementation is for the regulatory services software, which includes animal control, infringements, health, food, alcohol, building and planning consents and bylaws.

This phase is starting now and carries through until early next year.