Bytes Universal Systems SAMRAS solution empowers municipal compliance

Bytes Universal Systems (BUS) today announced that it has successfully implemented SAMRAS, its locally developed and fully integrated financial management system solution, in all its municipal customers across the country for mSCOA 6.1 compliance. The implementation follows Bytes Universal Systems endorsement by National Treasury as an approved service provider to assist municipalities in becoming mSCOA compliant.In 2016 National Treasury established a panel of service providers for the provision of an integrated financial management and internal control system for local government. The purpose of the panel was to enable municipalities to procure and implement approved financial management and control systems that complied with the regulation of a Standard Chart of Accounts (mSCOA). SAMRAS was the only system to qualify in all categories of municipalities, including metros.According to Cherina Smith (Strydom), General Manager: IP Development Solutions, the successful implementation of the SAMRAS system during the first two weeks of July, involved the co-ordination of over 250 people to achieve National Treasurys goal of ensuring that all municipalities in South Africa become mSCOA compliant.We want to thank all our clients involved during this time for their amazing commitment, patience and dedication in achieving this historic event, she said.In April 2014 National Treasury published a gazette outlining the municipal regulations with regard to a standard chart of accounts, the purpose being to strengthen and support municipalities capacity and capability to fulfil their Constitutional obligation of service delivery. The establishment of a panel of service providers in 2016 for the provision of an integrated financial management and internal control systems to ensure mSCOA compliance was one aspect of this initiative.Our selection as an approved provider was based not only on our proven track record and business continuity, we have been doing this for 40 years, but also focused on affordability, value for money, and the fact that SAMRAS is a purpose fit solution that addresses unique local municipal requirements and is mSCOA compliant. Our municipalities regularly top the Market Potential Index (MPI) ratings with clean audits. Furthermore, our solution is fully supported and maintained in order to remain compliant with any future updates issued by National Treasury and to address any changes in the municipal entitys underlying business process, she added.The SAMRAS solution will further strengthen National Treasurys vision of standardising information across all municipalities, enhancing monitoring and oversight, and enabling comparability of information across municipalities in terms of benchmarking, standards and measures in order to achieve service delivery excellence. In continuing our digitalization commitment to our clients, to bring about service excellence through smart city initiatives, we have released, as standard functionality, the citizen portal which enables citizens to access and pay their municipal accounts via a mobile and web application with secure cyber security facilities.  It also facilitates communication tracking between the municipality and the citizen of real-time events/warnings or service calls to be attended to, she concluded.More about SAMRASSAMRAS is a locally developed, fully integrated financial management solution. Through Bytes Universal Systems collective knowledge of government service delivery requirements, legislation and regulations, together with a passion for innovation, the organisation has developed SAMRAS to deliver superior value-adding solutions to its customers to enable them to meet, achieve and exceed their service mandates.SAMRAS ERP is a complete billing system including general ledger, budget & estimating, ACB payments, bank reconciliation, consolidated debtors, creditors/accounts payable/stores, financial statements, investment registers, job costing, assets/inventory, supply chain management, vehicle costing, personnel/HR, payroll, property records/valuations, dashboards, citizen portal, suppliers portal, contracts management, electronic document management, leave & overtime, NT reporting, capital budget and more.