Municipal Violations and Collections

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Last updated: Jan 03, 2025 by Laurie McIntosh
9 min read

 

Introduction

Municipal clients located within Ontario have specific processes for violation offences to be sent through. The two relevant processes are the POA (Provincial Offenses Act) and the AMPS (Administrative Monetary Penalty System). Municipalities will prescribe to one process or the other.

OPS-COM supports most aspects of the POA process and is considered as a Permitted Recipient under ARIS rules. The POA process is used when a violation is given to a vehicle that has no user information present within the system.

This process involves sending out vehicle data to the transportation authority (MTO) to receive additional user information, so any outstanding violations on the vehicle can be sent to court for collections.

This article will explain the process involved in the life-cycle of a violation for one municipality in Ontario, including interactions with the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) and the Ontario court system.

It is important to note these violations would be issued to a vehicle by license plate number. Unless the driver is a registered user in the OPS-COM system, the actual owner of the vehicle would not be known.

 

A client must be setup beforehand to use the MTO Lookup and the Court Requested Conviction status and workflow. This could require custom development fees to handle the client’s setup. Currently, this process is only available for use within the Ontario court system.

In addition to the OPS-COM setup, the client must work with the MTO to become an Authorized Requester of the MTO information. The process can be started by contacting ARIS@ontario.ca and requesting a RAW data account.

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An Example

Consider a municipal client that has the following violation life-cycle:

  1. A violation is issued with 7 days to pay during which the fine amount may be discounted. 

  2. On the 8th day, the fine is no longer discounted.

  3. Weekly, all tickets that have reached their 15th day of non-payment are sent to the MTO to do a lookup of relevant driver info.

  4. The MTO will send a return file containing the driver information for the vehicle involved in the violation, including address and driver's license number, to be stored temporarily in the database. 

    1. Notice letters can be issued to drivers who have not paid their violations. This is done using the letter report.

  5. If the violation is still outstanding on day 65 it will be sent to court and an additional court fee can be applied to the violation. 

    1. A file can be generated that is compatible with the Ontario court system if upload is available. In addition, a summary file can be generated to include all cases submitted to court in a particular timeframe.

  6. When the ticket has been paid, the court will send a report back to the parking manager to let them know what the outcome was. Admins can then use the information in the report to process the payment on the violation within the OPS-COM system.


Important Note about MTO Information

ARIS rules dictate the use of MTO information, requiring the information from the MTO is only temporarily stored within the OPS-COM system.

Once a violation has been cancelled, paid, or sent to collections, all information from the MTO related to the violation will be purged from the system.

 

Starting the Process

The interaction with the MTO begins after a violation is past due.

The admin will run a weekly report to determine if there are outstanding violations in the system that have gone unpaid for 7 days after they were marked as due. This is done using the Vehicle Lookup Export page.

This page can be found by following this menu tree:

  • Violations → Collections → Vehicle Lookup Export

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Vehicle Lookup Export Tool

Several search options are present on the page:

  • Minimum number of violations

  • Vehicle province or state

  • To search by issue date or by due date

  • Date range of the lookup

Clicking on export will generate a file to be sent to the MTO containing the license plate number of the vehicle that additional information is being requested for.

Notice there are various formats for this export:

  • Aris Raw Data Account: Used with an ARIS client using raw format lookups.

  • Aris Abstract Account: Used with an ARIS client using abstract format lookups.

  • Send to Collections: Used to send a report to a typical collections agency outside of the MTO process.

A text file will be generated with the filename as SendToMTO-XX-XX-XX.txt, with the X's acting as placeholders for the timestamp at the time of file creation.

 

MTO Export File

Here is a sample of what the exported text file will look like.

The file is formatted in a custom format required for the MTO to lookup driver information.

 

MTO Response File

The file that is returned from MTO Lookup will include driver information such as the registered vehicle owner's name and home address.

This information is temporarily stored in the OPS-COM system. As governed by ARIS rules, the information will be purged from the system after it is no longer needed. 

The document returned from the MTO will look like the following:

 

 

Importing the MTO Response File

To import the information received back from the MTO into the OPS-COM system, navigate to the Vehicle Lookup Import page found under the menu tree:

  • Violations → Collections → Vehicle Lookup Import

The Vehicle Lookup Import file selector tool opens.

Choose the file that came back from MTO and navigate to the file you wish to select for import.

Click the Import button.

A confirmation message will appear in the top right of the page.

Generating Notice Letters

Once the information has been imported, the data will be used to populate any missing notice letter information.

Violations that have had MTO information associated to them can be viewed from the Letter Report page.

For more information on this process, refer to this article: