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A Publication Featuring The Information
Services Technology of Maine State Government
| Volume VI, Issue 6 | June 2003 |
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By State Treasurer Dale McCormick
On June 10th TAMI (the Treasury Automated Management Information system) will celebrate one full year of operation. That means it has been one year since:
Yes, Maine has an electronic, paperless cash receipt system that also simultaneously serves as a revenue management system for agency managers, and as an automated reconciliation system for the State Treasurer’s Office. What have the benefits of TAMI been over the last year?
Time Savings to Agencies TAMI has created efficiencies in agencies all across State government with the time saved by only entering cash receipt data once, having fewer errors to correct, and having the ability to directly import information from proprietary systems. Maine Revenue Services wrote to us saying "TAMI’s reporting function is saving us clerical time that was previously used to manually generate daily management reports that consolidated deposit Cash Receipt (CR) information on an Excel spreadsheet." In addition, the Bureau of Accounts and Control now saves over 65 hours a month in not having to prepare, and scan the cash receipts for archiving purposes.
Cost Savings to Agencies Time is money, and with less manual clerical work, agency personnel are now able to concentrate on other duties. TAMI has helped agencies as budgets and staff numbers continues to shrink. Accounts and Control estimated when TAMI launched that the Bureau would save almost $600 per month in not having to process paper CRs.
More Accurate Accounting With less data entry and fewer keystrokes needed to record revenues, there is less opportunity for error. The Department of Labor stated early on that they were seeing fewer data entry errors. Fewer data entry errors mean less time spent modifying or correcting CRs. Not only does this make for cleaner accounting trails, but it also makes for less work at the agency.
More Efficient Recording of Revenues One of the major benefits of TAMI is that State revenues are now recorded in a timelier manner. The Treasurer’s Office can efficiently match incoming electronic transfers with the intended recipient agency, and send an electronic message for them to record the funds into the proper account. Returned items and any CRs that contain an error are caught quickly, and can be adjusted by the agency much faster than when the State was paper-based. All of this means revenues are recorded correctly and quickly, for better cash management.
What’s Next? While much of agency feedback has been positive, there have also been constructive comments describing what TAMI could do better. Over the last year we have rolled out new versions addressing some of these comments. More enhancements to TAMI are currently underway, and agencies will soon see even more to like.
Dale McCormick is the Treasurer of State. Questions or comments can be directed to her at state.treasurer@maine.gov.
