Once operations start, it is very important to include the operator in decisions relating to the municipality's parking policies. Very often the operator will have insights into situations which allow the council to make more informed policy decisions. Examples of this would be the expansion of parking areas and the annual determination of tariffs.
Law enforcement co-operation
The best practise in parking management systems occur where the operator and the law enforcement management work together to provide the foundation for effective law enforcement. With this in place there will be fewer motorists� complaints once law enforcement starts and will ensure that the process is well understood by all parties involved.
Occupancy Management
Within the first month of operation the operator should demonstrate the method they use in order to manage the accuracy of the occupancy of the site. Targets DO NOT WORK, any parking marshal left on their own will NOT record all parked vehicles, they will still take payment from the motorists but they will then pocket the money for themselves. An occupancy management system ensures that this cannot happen and will therefore protect the operation and specifically the revenue generation potential for the site, without which there can be no parking management.
NumQue use the patented quickpark occupancy management system which uses passive parking tags installed in each bay. The parking marshal must tag each tag with their quickpark terminal several times each day. Failure to tag is electronically detected and will lead to disciplinary actions being taken against the marshal. In practise this method of occupancy management provides and occupancy accuracy of greater than 95%.
Monthly Reports
The operator should provide the municipality with accurate and concise monthly reports showing the daily statistics of the site. These statistics should include site occupancy, site paid occupancy, cars parked, paid and expired, income for each day of the month as well as the total number of parking violations. Additional information relating to key performance indicators such as bay to marshal ratios should also be included in these reports.
Revenue Account
The operator should set up a specific bank account in its name for the site into which all the cash parking revenue collected is deposited on a daily basis. This ensures that the auditability of the site's cash parking revenue becomes very straight forward. The system should have a daily cash-up report allowing the banking to be verified against a system generated report showing cash payments and other types of payment received, the quickpark system provides such a report on a daily basis.
Auditability
Since every transaction is electronically captured and stored on a remote server the system is fully auditable. The municipalities should do an audit of the parking operations each year, at its own cost, to ensure that operations are running smoothly and the accounting meets the audit guidelines as laid out by the Auditor General.
