MS-1 Update
This update includes the DRA's latest revision for the 2010 MS-1 Report. There are very few changes, but you should nonetheless generate the final MS-1 to be signed and submitted only after you have installed this update. The only major change to be aware of requires that you indicate who appraises your utility values. This is provided at the top the second screen during the series of questions you are asked when generating the report.

The only change in the way the report calculates or displays value information only applies to towns that maintain Tax Increment Finance Districts (TIFs) as districts within the system and only if you choose during the setup process to include assessments for one or more of the TIFs on Page 7 of the MS-1. If you're one of the one or two towns that do so, the "retained captured assessed value" of the included TIF(s) will be subtracted (per DRA instructions) from the "valuation before exemptions" on Page 2. If you have questions, please contact Avitar.

Tax Calculation Changes
There are a few changes to the Tax Calculation process designed to simplify the process and reduce the chance that warrants are calculated or formalized incorrectly. The changes are as follows:

In towns that calculate two warrants each year, you may see a bit more information the first time you calculate the year's first warrant. Remember that for the first warrant, the system defaults the individual component tax rates (i.e. local, school, county, state ed.) to half of the corresponding rate for the previous year's final bill. In instances where the individual component rates for the previous tax year were odd numbers (as in not even) this resulted in a rounding of the half penny up to the nearest penny. (For example, half of $0.99 was rounded to $0.50.) If you had a few of these and didn't catch it, it resulted in the year's first half tax rate exceeding half of the previous year's final rate. When this wasn't caught in time, the DRA, without exception, allowed the bills to be sent anyway. But we have nonetheless added an additional validation. On the first calculation of the first warrant for a year, you will be warned (in the form of red labels with an on screen message) that one or more of the previous year's final component rates has been rounded and you may need to adjust one or more rate manually. Additionally, in towns with additional tax districts, the system will now default individual district tax rates (again with red messages where rounding occurs) to half of the district's final rate for the previous year.

In towns that calculate two warrants each year, you will now be presented with a report of parcels for which the final bill of the year is a negative tax bill. These are parcels that may have been marked as exempt, had an exemption added, or had their assessments dramatically reduced between the first and second bills, such that their first bill exceeded their total tax bill for the year. This information was always presented on the Tax Warnings Report, but it was often overlooked. Now, if you have negative bills, the separate report will be displayed when you print your Tax Totals Report.

You have always been prevented from finalizing the second warrant of the year (where applicable) in cases where you issued a bill on the first warrant for a property that no longer existed at the time of the second warrant. In most scenarios this is the appropriate response. However, it was unnecessary if the amount of the first tax bill on the deleted parcel was zero. Nonetheless, the system prevented you from formalizing the warrant until you added the parcel back with zero value and recalculated the warrant, leaving you with a matching pair of zero dollar first and second bills. We have eliminated this requirement such that when a parcel was deleted prior to the second warrant you can still proceed when the amount of the first bill was zero.

The Tax Totals Report has been revised slightly (label and font changes) to make it easier to compare to the Commitment Report provided by the DRA.

When formalizing your final warrant of the year, you will be prompted to enter the amount which you were directed to collect by DRA. You will need to have this available before you can proceed. This information is provided on the Tax Commitment Verification Report sent to you or your tax collector each year by DRA (i.e. the one with the target commitment amount and the half percent acceptable high and low range). The system will then ensure that the actual amount of the calculated warrant falls within the acceptable range before you formalize the final warrant. It may seem like an unnecessary and arduous step, but we have had several communities in recent years proceed when they were outside of the acceptable range, only to realize it after bills had already been mailed.

Specificity of Audit Report
This update includes several fixes and enhancements for the Audit Report. Previously, the mechanism in the database used to audit building value changes would sometimes record multiple value changes for the same event. For example, if you made a change to the roof style that produced a $2,000 change in value, the audit report would record two changes -- EDIT POINTS with a $2,000 change and EDIT DEPREC with another $2,000 change -- even though the net change in value was only $2,000. This has been resolved for changes going forward

Additionally, prior to this update if you wanted to produce an Audit Report of changes made on a single day, for example yesterday, you had to indicate you wanted updates made between yesterday and today. This made it difficult, if not impossible, to list changes made today because the system did not allow you to choose a between date in the future, i.e. tomorrow. Now, you can select from today to today and see the expected results.

Finally, we have added the ability to generate an Audit Report for all changes of a given type (e.g. ADD BUILDING or DELETE CARD) to make it easier to find specific categories of changes. Keep in mind the query parameters for the Audit Report are cumulative so you could, for example, display all DELETE CARD changes made between last month and today.

Consistency of Acreage on Reports
The parcel acreage value in the system is maintained to three decimal places of precision (e.g. 1.234 acres). Unfortunately, there were several reports in the system that had been rounding acreage values to two decimal places. This has been resolved so the reports are consistent.

Recalculation of Land Values on SQL 2008
Increasingly, we have been upgrading newer versions of the underlying SQL Server database engine as users retire and replace older hardware and operating systems. Some users found that, because of a slightly different way in which SQL 2008 evaluated statements (relative to earlier versions of the database application), they were unable to recalculate land values when there was a feature type in the database with an exceptionally large value. (Confusing, we know.) We have resolved this on a case by case basis as we have encountered it, but this change has been incorporated system wide with this update.

Retirement of Scale Fonts Setting
The Scale Fonts (File | Scale Fonts) setting was a configuration you could make on each workstation to (as indicated by the name) scale the font size of labels within the program proportionately when you maximized the program. This worked nicely back in the days of Windows 98 and Windows NT, but was producing unpredictable (and sometimes fatal) results on newer operating systems. If you need the assistance previously provided by this function, you should be getting it by adjusting your resolution and display settings through Windows.

Increased Size of Parcel Notes
We have increased the size of the Notes field on the parcel from 255 to 500 characters. So go crazy. When long notes are added to a parcel, depending on the screen resolution it may not be possible to view the entire Notes field on the General tab on the application's main screen. In such cases, you can simply double-click on the Notes display and the Sales grid will be overlaid with the entire Notes field. You can double-click on the Notes field again to truncate it and display the Sales grid again, or it will revert to the default display when you select another parcel.

Addition of Sale Notes
This update includes a new Notes field for each sale record. Again, go crazy. But not as crazy -- this Notes field is only 50 characters. However, when matching sales within the Real Data Corp. Exchange module, the Notes field on the Avitar sale record will default to the RDC Comment field. Once it is there, you can modify or remove as needed. Due to space limitations, you must hover the cursor over the Sales grid on the program's main screen to reveal any notes as a tool tip -- the Notes field does not appear as its own column within the grid. Similarly, the Notes field is not included on the printed assessment card. It is primarily intended to be a method by which you can maintain information about the sale relative to the equalization process.

Copy Owner Name/Address to Clipboard
A user suggested some time ago that it would be helpful to be able to copy the entire owner name and address to the system clipboard when using owner information from Assessing in other applications. Examples might be including the owner name and address in the body of an email, pasting the information in a letter, or formatting an envelope. Previously, you could do this one attribute at a time (e.g. owner name, then second owner name, etc.) using the standard Windows right-click and copy. Now, you can press the new Copy Owner Info to Clipboard icon (located by the zip code in the Edit General Information dialog box) to copy the entire name and address to the system clipboard. Note, you should not use this to copy one parcel's owner information within Avitar Assessing to update another parcel's owner information -- use the lookup functions from the Choose Existing Owner icon for that. But the clipboard function can be helpful for transferring the entire block of information to other applications.

Owner Index Report and Archived Values
Until now, you could generate the Owner Index Report in its expanded format and choose to include either Current or Previous values. We have now added the ability to generate the report using Archived Values for a selected previous tax year. To do so, first select Reports | Owner Index. Check the Description & Values checkbox, select the Archived Values radio button, and choose the appropriate year from the list. Note, if you use the Tax Calculation functions in Avitar Assessing to generate your warrant, the system will automatically archive your values each year. If you do not do so, you should be manually archiving the values at the appropriate time. For more information, consult the online help file or the manual or contact Avitar.

Review Flag on Assessment Card
Sometimes when our assessors are doing field reviews, it can be helpful for them to know whether the parcel on the assessment card they're looking at has been flagged for review or not. So we added a little flag icon, appropriately enough, across the top of the first page of the assessment card (between the town name and the print date) that will be displayed when the parcel has been flagged for review.

Picture Options When Deleting Buildings
Back in the old days, when you were limited to a single picture on each card, it was used primarily for building pictures on improved parcels or view pictures on vacant parcels. So the logic was straightforward -- when you deleted a parcel's building, the system naturally deleted the picture as well. This proved to be too indiscriminant with the addition of a second picture. When you deleted the building from a parcel (Utilities | Delete | Delete Building) it was deleting both pictures from the parcel, sometimes blowing away a view picture that was still applicable. This has been resolved so that, now when you delete a building, you will be asked whether or not you wish to keep each picture individually.

District Report to Current Recordset
In towns that have districts configured (e.g. special taxable village, water, or fire districts) the Districts Report has always enabled you to generate a report of the parcels either included in a specific district or not included in any district. But sometimes it's necessary to do more with the parcels in a district than simply generate a list. Now, you can use a function included on the District Reports dialog box to send the parcels in a specific district to the system's current recordset. From there, you are able to print cards or generate a different report based on the current recordset. To do so, first select Reports | Districts. Within the Districts dialog box you will now notice a yellow data view icon to the right of each district. Simply click the corresponding icon for the desired district. You will be asked to confirm that you wish to reset the system's current recordset based on the district parcels and you will be notified of the number of parcels matching that criterion. You can simply close the Districts dialog box and proceed with reviewing the parcels, printing cards, or generating reports based on the current recordset. You also have the option of setting the current recordset to parcels not included in any district which can be helpful in identifying and updating parcels that should be in a district but may have been missed.

Building Age Depreciation Report
Several updates ago, we included a detailed section in the Building Codes Report outlining all of the factors that went into calculating the standard age depreciation for buildings. Unfortunately, for some it was more confusing than illuminating so we subsequently eliminated that section. We have reintroduced the age depreciation schedule in a straightforward format with concrete numbers over selected ages for each condition. To access the report, select Reports | Codes & Adjustments and select the report for Building Codes.

New Categories on Land Codes Report
With the last update we added land attributes for Site, Road, Driveway, and Topography. With this update we have added corresponding sections to the Land Codes Report so that you can print the list of modifiers and factors. To do so, select Reports | Codes & Adjustments and select the report for Land Codes.