Modernizing Government Revenue Collection

Citizens pay property taxes online from their phones. They expect instant receipts via email. They assume their payment history is available at a click. Yet behind the counter, many government agencies still rely on systems designed decades ago—or no system at all.

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The gap between citizen expectations and the capabilities of many state and local governments is widening. This guide provides an overview of how to close that gap based on our experience implementing modern revenue collection systems for 80+ government agencies across North America.

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The State of Government Payments Today

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Government payment collection exists on a spectrum. On one end: sophisticated cloud platforms with real-time integration, mobile apps, and comprehensive reporting. On the other: handwritten receipts, Excel reconciliation, and cash drawers counted manually at shift end.

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Most agencies sit somewhere in the middle—functional but inefficient, stable but stagnant.

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Common Scenarios We See

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The Spreadsheet Shop Payments logged in Excel. Receipts from a receipt book. Daily reconciliation takes hours. No integration with the ERP—someone re-keys everything. It works, but barely, and institutional knowledge walks out the door with every retirement.

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The Legacy System A purpose-built system implemented years (sometimes decades) ago. It mostly works. Nobody really understands it anymore. The vendor may or may not still exist. Upgrades are expensive and terrifying. Everyone's afraid to touch it.

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The ERP Module The agency bought an ERP with a cashiering module included. It handles basic transactions but wasn't designed for high-volume counter operations. Cashiers struggle with the interface. Features that retail takes for granted are missing or clunky.

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The Patchwork Different departments use different systems. Utilities has one thing, taxes has another, permits uses a third. Nothing talks to anything else. Citizens might have three different accounts to pay three different bills.

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Sound familiar? Agencies across the country face these exact scenarios—which is why modernization is increasingly urgent.

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What Citizens Actually Expect

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Private sector experiences set public expectations. When citizens interact with Amazon, their bank, or Uber, they experience:

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Seamless omnichannel access — Pay on your phone, in person, through an app, online—whatever's convenient right now
Instant confirmation — Email receipt arrives before you've put your card away
Account visibility — Full payment history, current balances, upcoming due dates—all in one place
Flexible payment options — Credit cards, debit cards, ACH, digital wallets, payment plans
Minimal friction — Saved payment methods, auto-pay, one-click payments

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Then those same citizens walk into a government office and encounter:

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Check or cash only (or extra fees for cards)
Paper receipts that get lost
No online access to payment history
Having to call for balance information
Separate accounts for each department

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The expectation gap erodes trust in government competence—even when the underlying services are excellent.

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The Demographic Shift

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Consider who's walking through your doors:

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Digital natives now represent a significant portion of property owners, business license applicants, and permit seekers. They've never written a check. They don't understand why they can't just pay on their phone.

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Aging populations increasingly prefer digital channels too—online banking adoption among seniors has surged. The assumption that older residents prefer in-person transactions is increasingly outdated.

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Busy professionals can't take time off work to pay bills in person during business hours. If there's no online option, they mail checks—which creates processing burden on your end.

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Modern payment systems aren't about chasing trends. They're about meeting citizens where they are.

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The Hidden Costs of Legacy Systems

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Legacy cashiering systems (or no system at all) carry costs that don't show up as line items but drain resources constantly:

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Staff Time

How many hours per week does your team spend on:

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Manual data entry from POS to ERP
End-of-day drawer reconciliation
Researching payment discrepancies
Answering "did my payment post?" calls
Creating reports by exporting and reformatting data

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Multiply those hours by fully-loaded staff cost. That's real money—often more than modern system subscription fees.

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Agencies that modernize typically see reconciliation time drop dramatically. When payments post to the ERP in real-time and audit trails are automatic, daily close-out becomes a 10-minute verification rather than an hour-long hunt.

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Error Correction

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Manual processes generate errors. A transposed number. A payment applied to the wrong account. A misread handwritten note. Each error requires:

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Time to identify the problem
Time to research what happened
Time to correct it
Time to communicate with the affected citizen
Potential refunds, adjustments, or credits

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Error rates of 2-5% are common in manual environments. At scale, that's hundreds or thousands of corrections per year.

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Opportunity Cost

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When staff spend time on reconciliation, they're not:

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Improving customer service
Analyzing revenue trends
Identifying collection opportunities
Developing better processes

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Your best people doing low-value work is a strategic loss.

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Audit and Compliance Risk

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Auditors love complete, timestamped, searchable transaction records. They're less fond of:

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Handwritten logs
Spreadsheets without change tracking
Disconnected systems that might not agree
Missing documentation for voids and adjustments

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Audit findings, even when they do not involve wrongdoing, create yet more work for your most experienced staff.

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Recruitment and Retention

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Would you want to work in an office using 1990s technology? Neither does your next hire. Modern tools are a recruitment advantage. Legacy systems are a retention risk—especially for skilled staff who can work anywhere.

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What Modern Revenue Collection Looks Like

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Modern doesn't mean bleeding-edge or experimental. It means systems designed for how government actually operates today, with capabilities that citizens and staff expect.

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Unified Platform

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One system for all revenue types, all departments, all locations. Whether a citizen is paying property taxes or a parking ticket, the experience is consistent. Whether a cashier is at the main office or a satellite location, they use the same interface.

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This matters at scale. Counties serving populations approaching two million use unified platforms to process over 500,000 annual transactions—with consistent processes across every collection point.

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Benefits:

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Single source of truth for all payment data
Consistent training across departments
Consolidated reporting
Simplified IT support

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Real-Time Integration

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Payments flow to your ERP immediately—not overnight, not weekly, but as they happen. Balances update in real-time across all systems. No manual reconciliation. No timing discrepancies.

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Benefits:

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Always-accurate balance information
Same-day financial visibility
Elimination of reconciliation burden
Clean audit trail

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Platforms with extensive pre-built integrations—90+ systems in some cases—make real-time connectivity achievable without custom development.

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Omnichannel Collection

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Citizens choose how to pay:

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In person at any counter location
Online through a branded portal
Via mobile-optimized web interface
Through automated phone system
At self-service kiosk

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All channels feed the same system. A payment made online at midnight appears immediately when the citizen calls the next morning.

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Self-Service Capabilities

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Citizens can:

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Look up balances without calling
View complete payment history
Set up recurring payments
Receive electronic notifications
Download receipts anytime

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This isn't just convenience—it's demand deflection. Every self-service transaction is one less counter visit or phone call.

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Modern Security

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PCI-compliant payment processing (semi-integrated architecture keeps you out of scope)
End-to-end encryption
Role-based access controls
Complete audit logging
SOC 2 Type 2 certification

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Security shouldn't be a legacy system's weakest link.

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Common Modernization Barriers

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If the benefits are clear, why do agencies struggle to modernize? Usually, a combination of these factors:

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Budget Constraints

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"We can't afford it" is often the first objection. But this framing ignores:

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The ongoing cost of current inefficiencies
Potential for payment processing revenue
Reduced staffing needs over time
Cloud subscription models that avoid capital expense

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The real question isn't "Can we afford to modernize?" but "Can we afford not to?"

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Integration Complexity

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"It won't work with our systems" reflects legitimate concern. Legacy ERP systems, homegrown databases, and old billing systems don't always play nicely with modern platforms.

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The solution: choose a cashiering system with proven integration capabilities and a track record with systems like yours. The best platforms support 90+ integrations out of the box—including the specific Workday, Oracle, Tyler, and other systems government agencies actually use.

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Organizational Resistance

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"We've always done it this way" kills more modernization projects than budget ever will.

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Change is hard. Staff comfortable with current processes—even inefficient ones—may resist. Department heads may see modernization as threatening their autonomy. IT may worry about supporting something new.

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Success requires executive sponsorship, clear communication about why change is needed, and involvement of skeptics in the planning process.

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Procurement Hurdles

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Government procurement exists for good reasons, but it can slow modernization:

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RFP processes take months
Requirements written around old assumptions
Lowest-price-wins criteria that ignore total cost of ownership
Risk aversion that favors incumbent vendors

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Government agencies that modernize successfully often use cooperative purchasing agreements, piggyback on other agencies' contracts, or structure procurements to value outcomes over features.

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Fear of Failure

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High-profile government IT failures make headlines. Nobody wants to be the next cautionary tale. This fear often leads to paralysis by analysis and continuing use of badly outdated systems that cause real headaches for staff on a daily basis.

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These fears are completely understandable. In our experience, the best way to overcome them is to move through a thorough, predictable implementation process with extensive windows for testing and training before going live.

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Building the Business Case

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Modernization requires investment. Investment requires justification. Here's how to build a compelling case:

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Quantify Current Costs

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Document what you're spending now:

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Staff hours on manual processes (reconciliation, data entry, error correction)
Payment processing fees (often negotiable with modern systems)
Technology maintenance (legacy system support contracts, server costs)
Audit remediation (time spent on findings related to payment systems)

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Even rough estimates help. "We spend approximately 20 hours per week on reconciliation" is better than no number.

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Project Measurable Benefits

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Modern systems deliver:

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Reduced processing time per transaction
Lower error rates
Decreased citizen service calls
Potential payment processing revenue share
Reduced audit findings

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Convert these to dollar values where possible. Soft benefits (citizen satisfaction, staff morale) matter too but are harder to quantify.

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Consider Total Cost of Ownership

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Compare full costs over five years:

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Current state:

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Staff time on inefficiencies
Legacy system maintenance
Lost revenue from payment processing fees
Risk exposure from security gaps

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Modern system:

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Subscription/licensing costs
Implementation costs
Integration development
Ongoing support

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Often, the modern system is cheaper when all costs are included—especially if the legacy system requires expensive upgrades to remain viable.

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Address Risk

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What's the risk of doing nothing?

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Security breach with outdated systems
Staff departures taking institutional knowledge
Audit findings requiring expensive remediation
Citizen frustration affecting broader trust in government

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In most cases, modernization isn't just opportunity to improve efficiency - it’s also a major win from a risk management point of view.

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Choosing a Modernization Path

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Government agencies typically choose one of three paths:

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Extend Your ERP

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Use your existing ERP's cashiering module, possibly with upgrades or add-ons.

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Pros:

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Single vendor relationship
Native integration (in theory)
May be included in existing contract

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Cons:

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ERP cashiering modules often weak at point-of-sale operations
May require costly upgrade to access features
Your team already knows the limitations

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Best for: Government agencies whose ERP genuinely meets their cashiering needs and has room to grow.

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Best-of-Breed Cashiering

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Choose a purpose-built cashiering system designed specifically for government revenue collection.

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Pros:

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Deep functionality for cashiering scenarios
Modern interface designed for cashiers
Specialized features (multi-tender, payment plans, etc.)
Vendor focused entirely on this problem

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Cons:

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Requires integration with ERP
Another vendor relationship
Potential for integration complexity (though pre-built integrations mitigate this)

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Best for: Government agencies that need robust cashiering capabilities beyond what ERP modules offer.

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Custom Development

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Build a custom solution tailored to your exact needs.

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Pros:

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Fits your processes exactly
No software licensing fees
Full control over roadmap

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Cons:

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High development cost
Ongoing maintenance burden
Single point of failure (your dev team)
Typically takes longer than anticipated

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Best for: Government agencies with truly unique requirements and strong internal development capacity. This combination is exceedingly rare.

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The Integration Imperative

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Whatever path you choose, integration is the key that makes it work. A beautiful new cashiering system that doesn't connect to your ERP is a fancy data entry tool—you're still re-keying transactions.

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Evaluate integration on three dimensions:

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Breadth: Does it connect to all the systems you need? (ERP, billing, permitting, tax, courts, etc.)

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Depth: Is it just data export, or real-time bidirectional posting with full GL coding?

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Maturity: Is the integration production-tested with government agencies like yours, or are you the pilot?

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The right cashiering system has deep, proven integrations with government-specific systems—not just claims of API capability.

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How Teller Can Help

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Teller Government Cashiering is purpose-built for government revenue collection—and has helped 80+ state and local governments modernize their payment operations.

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Built for Government

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Teller isn't repurposed retail POS software. It's designed from the ground up for government requirements:

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Fund accounting — Proper GL distribution across funds and departments
Multi-jurisdiction — Support for shared services serving multiple entities
Government compliance — SOC 2 Type 2 certified, PCI-compliant architecture
Scale flexibility — From cities of 48,000 to counties of 1.9 million

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100% Client Retention

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This is the number that matters most: every government agency that has implemented Teller has stayed. 100% retention across 80+ clients —because the system works, the integrations hold, and the partnership delivers.

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When government agencies like Tulsa County (650,000 residents) replace legacy systems with Teller, they stay. When Santa Clara County (1.9 million residents) trusts Teller with 500,000+ annual tax payments, the platform performs.

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Integration Depth

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Teller connects to what you already have:

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90+ pre-built integrations — ERPs, billing systems, permitting, tax, courts
43 Workday deployments — The deepest Workday integration in government cashiering
Real-time posting — Transactions flow to your ERP in seconds, not overnight
Major government ERPs — Oracle, Tyler, SAP, PeopleSoft

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Integration isn't an afterthought. It’s foundational.

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