David Parsons had Board of Land and Natural Resources members rolling their eyes heavenward as he attempted to explain what his Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation was doing to get its accounts receivable billing system in ship-shape. With just one more piece of major hardware to purchase, the division is on the verge of having a state-of-the-art computerized accounting program, Parsons said, with the time-table for completing installation of the system set for July 1997.
In the meantime, the division is owed nearly $600,000 in accounts receivable due 60 days or more. Parsons failed to provide the board with a list of 30-day past-due accounts, nor did he say how much was owed on more than 700 outstanding accounts which the division describes as “inactive.”
Of that amount, nearly $494,000, or 84 percent, is owed by just two accounts: Ke`ehi Marine Center on O`ahu and Kona Fuel and Marine at Honokohau Harbor on the Big Island.
Parsons’ long-awaited explanation was ordered by the board at a July 1996 meeting following an admission by the division’s property manager at the time, Larry Cobb, that the division had no clear idea of who owed what. On November 21, at what Land Board chairman Mike Wilson describes as a board “briefing” (for which full public notice is not required, he claims), Parsons finally delivered a report of DOBOR’s efforts to enter the computer age.
The present problems can be traced back, Parsons said, to when DOBOR was still a part of the state Department of Transportation. “Just before we were transferred over here, to DLNR,” Parsons said, “when the bill for transferring the boating program had been passed, we started on a transition program. At that time, we were aware of the shortcomings of the system that was in effect for the [Department of Transportation] Harbors Division. So part of the transfer to DLNR was a provision for a consultant to develop new requirements for us. One of the things that they strongly recommended was an upgraded accounts receivable system.
“We had some money in that consultant contract to start on this. It was started in a programming language called Clarion. But after we transferred over here, we found out that the department [DLNR’s] system was going to be developed with the FoxPro language, so the Clarion system had to be converted — it’s still being converted.
“In the meantime, for the first two years that the Boating program was over here in DLNR, we were still receiving fiscal support from the Harbors Division. And they were having more problems with that. It made it very difficult for us to get our information out of the system. They could work on either commercial Harbors accounts or Boating accounts, but not both at the same time. And so they always chose to work on commercial accounts first; that was their highest priority. It left us in a back-up mode, so to speak.
“When we got over here, the fiscal office established what we’re using right now, an interim program, until we can get the brand new system up. In order to get even the interim billing system in order, we had to wait until we got all of the account details out of the Harbors Division, which was last year.” [The Division of Boating transferred into the DLNR in 1992. — Editor’s note.] Since then, the bills have been getting out in a more timely manner, Parsons said.
The new program, which the division refers to as BARF (for Boating Accounts Receivable-FoxPro — a name that failed to draw comment, or even a snicker, at the board briefing) has been tested at the Wai`anae small boat harbor since July 1996, Parsons said. Meantime, all data for the O`ahu accounts are being entered into the system and, he continued, “we are incorporating account details on Maui accounts and working on the conversion tables for Kaua`i. The Big Island is more or less bringing up the rear.”
The Wai`anae office is to be fully operational in January 1996. Gradually, Maui, Kaua`i, and the Big Island will be brought on line, with a July 1997 target date for all islands.
Keel-Hauling
Altogether, Parsons said, there are 2,268 active accounts. When inactive accounts (ones that have an unpaid balance, but where the tenant has vacated DOBOR premises) are added in, the total number comes to about 3,000 statewide.
“Why is it going to take you to July” to get the program in place, asked Colbert Matsumoto, at-large board member.
Parsons replied that the conversion was being done in-house, with the division having only one full-time employee to work on it.
“And it takes almost eight months to do 3,000 accounts?” Matsumoto asked.
“Well, it’s the programming and then de-bugging for each system,” Parsons said.
“That should take one month at the most, if you have a competent programmer,” Matsumoto said. “If we were a business and had to operate on our revenues, we’d go broke. I don’t understand why we can’t get it done sooner, particularly since you’ve been working on this, apparently, for quite a while.”
Matsumoto, an attorney, noted that his office’s billing system, which has a roughly equivalent number of accounts, took nowhere nearly as long to be installed and operational. “And I don’t even have a full-time programmer on staff,” he added.
“It’s incomprehensible to me that you would need that much time to get this on-line.”
O`ahu board member Michael Nekoba commented on the fact that the list of delinquent accounts provided by Parsons included only those active accounts that were at least 60 days overdue.
“The 30-60 day period is pretty dynamic, you might say,” Parsons responded. “I can get that for you.”
Nekoba then commented on the overdue balances: “If I look at this from a business standpoint, $590,000, $600,000 out there over 60 days right now, yeah? And I don’t know how much is between 30 and 60 days, but those are also delinquent accounts.
“If you have 3,000 accounts, it shouldn’t take till July. You’ve already been working on it for two years. This is not a rocket-scientist’s system, right? This is just billing and keeping track of accounts receivable. It’s relatively simple… I can’t believe that the state accounting or fiscal department would take two and a half years to do a simple program.”
Parsons responded that he had been told it was really a job for three people, but because of financial constraints, he had only one staffer available.
Board chairman Wilson summarized the sentiment of the board, five of whose six members were present: “I think what the board is saying, it looks as though we should operate on the assumption that July is probably too late. We need to find out what we need to do to get it completed, hopefully, in a lot shorter time than that.”
Volume 7, Number 6 December 1996