For more than a decade, the Alachua County Tax Collector’s Office has partnered with Grant Street Group to consolidate core operations onto a single, integrated platform. By moving from multiple vendor systems to Grant Street Group’s suite—TaxSys®, PaymentExpress®, RenewExpress, EscrowExpress, LienHub, and TitleExpress—the office has reduced manual work, simplified vendor management, and redirected staff time to higher-value work. Through staffing changes driven by natural attrition and reassignment, the Alachua County Tax Collector’s Office identified at least $2.5 million in net salary savings, while enhancing service levels. Those efficiencies helped the office focus on improvement and service quality, contributing to its 2022 Sterling Award.
At a Glance
Before partnering with Grant Street Group, the Alachua County Tax Collector's Office:
- Relied on multiple separate systems and vendors to manage property tax, DMV, escrow tax management, and delinquent tax processes.
- Spent significant leadership time reconciling payments from multiple payment vendors and distributing funds.
- Needed to reduce the extensive data management time spent by key personnel.
By consolidating onto a single integrated platform, the office:
- Realized at least $2.5 million in net salary savings without layoffs.
- Simplified daily operations across functional areas.
- Shifted high-volume, routine work to online and self-service channels.
- Freed leaders and staff to invest in employee development and organizational improvement.
Solution: An Integrated Tax, Payment, and Auctions Platform
In 2012, the Alachua County Tax Collector’s Office adopted Grant Street Group’s integrated suite. They leverage:
- TaxSys as the core, integrated tax revenue collection system, streamlining billing, collections, and reporting across the office.
- PaymentExpress for secure, online, and over-the-counter e-payments, including counter credit card transactions that they could not previously accept.
- RenewExpress to move DMV renewals online, improving in-office wait times.
- EscrowExpress to transition bulk escrow payments online.
- LienHub to manage online tax certificate auctions with self-service bidder registration, certificate transfers, ACH payments, and reporting.
- TitleExpress to integrate title searches into the system, reducing coordination and manual tracking.
Because all applications are tightly integrated, data flows automatically between functions. The tax, DMV, and finance teams work from a single source of truth, with fewer interfaces to manage and fewer handoffs to reconcile.
Financial Impact: Millions of Dollars Saved Through Staffing Efficiencies
The primary financial gains for the Alachua County Tax Collector’s Office have come from staffing efficiencies realized over more than a decade on the integrated platform.
Chief Deputy Jon Costabile estimates at least $2.5 million in net salary savings over 12 years, even after accounting for software costs. By making changes gradually through attrition and reassignment, the office improved customer service levels.
Key staffing results
These changes created durable savings while supporting better service to residents.
Operational Excellence: From Reactive Work to Continuous Improvement
The integrated system changed how the office operates:
- Staff spend less time correcting errors, rebalancing, and tracking down data while maintaining strong performance on state and county audits.
- The office spends more time on training, quality checks, and process improvement.
- Routine transactions now flow through online and self-service channels, so in-office staff can focus on residents with more complex needs.
- Grant Street Group’s support for online taxpayers and bidders has reduced call center load, allowing the office to handle phone calls with fewer agents.
- Reliable, detailed reporting from TaxSys feeds the office’s own business intelligence dashboard, helping staff respond quickly to external information requests—an area that impressed Florida Sterling Award examiners and earned the team the “role model organization” designation, according to Tax Collector John Power.
“Having the Grant Street suite in place has allowed our office to focus on bigger picture priorities and develop our team instead of worrying about the tax system itself,” said John Power, Alachua County Tax Collector. This shift in focus has been central to Alachua’s pursuit of the Sterling Award, which Tax Collector John Power describes as a “model of organizational excellence” with a strong emphasis on employee engagement, training, and customer satisfaction.
Investing in People and Service Quality
With a stable, integrated platform in place, the Alachua County Tax Collector’s Office can invest more deliberately in its workforce and resident experience. The office now:
- Maintains greater than 95% customer satisfaction while reducing wait times and strengthening quality assurance.
- Prioritizes employee engagement and workforce development, supported by systems that staff find reliable and straightforward to use.
- Sends staff to Grant Street’s TaxSys User Group Meeting each year to deepen skills and connect with peers statewide.
As Tax Collector John Power notes, “You will succeed at what you focus on.” The integrated system has given the office the time and confidence to focus on leadership, strategy, workforce, and customer outcomes.
A Long-Term Foundation for Excellence
After more than a decade on a single integrated platform, Alachua County has:
- Reduced avoidable losses on routine transactions by moving business online.
- Saved millions in salary costs through automation and streamlined workflows.
- Redirected leadership and staff capacity toward operational excellence, employee engagement, and sustained high customer satisfaction.
What began as a system replacement has become a foundation for how the Alachua County Tax Collector’s Office leads, manages, and continuously improves its operations.
For more information, contact Craig Phillips, Florida Business Development Manager for Grant Street, at (772) 263-2363 or via email at craig.phillips@grantstreet.com.
About Grant Street Group
Grant Street Group delivers cloud-based software for property tax administration, electronic payments, and online auctions. TaxSys® supports the full property tax lifecycle, and PaymentExpress® powers secure, compliant payments across government services. Grant Street’s auction platforms support large-scale financial and securities auctions nationwide.
