City Council Quickly Adapts to Regulatory Changes with Desktop Imaging and ABBYY Purpose-Built Automation

In 2025, the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) introduced significant changes to New Zealand’s Rates Rebate program, requiring local councils to take on the burden of a number of application processing challenges that included:

• A retired online submission portal: The electronic Rebate Management System (eRMS) became readonly; online submissions replaced with monthly spreadsheets
• New eligibility criteria: The introduction of Super Gold Card status as a calculation variable
• Monthly reporting requirements: Consolidated refund requests due within five days of month-end
• Seven-year retention mandate: All applications and supporting documents now subject to DIA audit

For Wellington City Council, these changes meant staff would need to manually validate, calculate, enter, and report on thousands of annual applications—a massive administrative burden that would divert resources from other critical services.

Wellington City Council selected an ABBYY partner, Desktop Imaging, to solve the challenges. Desktop Imaging’s DI Automation Rates Rebate Service is built on ABBYY’s intelligent document processing technology. It’s the only current purpose-built automation solution specifically designed for New Zealand councils’ rates rebate processing needs.

Key service components:

• Automated form validation: Ensures completeness of all forms and their eligibility
• Built-in eligibility calculations: Validates rebate amounts per DIA requirements
• Direct system integration: Formatted CSV files for seamless import into WCC’s Property and Rating System
• Automatic monthly DIA reports: Generated within deadline requirements
• Compliant document conversion: Saved to PDF-A format, meeting Archives NZ standards

Pay-per-application model delivers immediate value

With no upfront investment, no software licenses, and no infrastructure costs, Wellington City Council only pays for what they process. Monthly costs are predictable, scalable, and align directly with application volumes.

Implementation in days, not months

Unlike traditional software implementations, there was no software installation, no infrastructure investment, no lengthy project timelines—just immediate processing capability when Wellington City Council needed it most.

Since going live in July 2025, Wellington City Council has achieved seamless processing of applications— from day one that serves as a model for all City Councils to adopt throughout New Zealand.

• 800+ applications processed without manual data entry
• 100% DIA monthly reporting deadlines met
• Full compliance achieved with new document retention requirements
• Internal manual processing burden eliminated