Press release from the Allen County Recorder’s office:
Number of paperless documents has doubled over past year, increasing efficiency
The use of paperless “e-recording” has accelerated dramatically in Allen County in the 90 days since the debut of a new electronic recording system that allows property records to be routedbetween the different county departments that must review them.
On Sept. 1, the Allen County Recorder’s Office began using DocRouter, a software package that permits electronic documents that must be viewed by multiple departments to be circulated without a hard copy. Although most property records need only be presented to the Recorder’s Office, some, primarily deeds, must be reviewed by the County Auditor and Assessor before they can be recorded.
Although Allen County has accepted e-recordings since 2008, use of the service had been limited due to the inability to circulate electronic deeds between departments. DocRouter provided the Recorder’s Office with the ability to route deeds and their associated sales disclosure forms.
Between Sept. 1 and Dec. 1, the number of e-recorded documents doubled over the same period one year ago. During that period in 2009, e-recordings made up 9.1 percent of documents received by the Allen County Recorder’s Office. In the same period this year, that number surged to 18.9 percent. In the 90 days immediately prior to the implementation of DocRouter (June 1-Aug. 30, 2010), 13.4 percent of all documents received by the Allen County Recorder’s Office were e-recordings.
“If you consider labor costs and the time we are saving, DocRouter is already paying for itself,” said Allen County Recorder John McGauley. “As use goes up, so will the savings we realize. That savings represents extra people we will not need and time we can devote to other tasks.”
DocRouter cost $12,500 to implement, paid for through fees collected by the Recorder’s Office.
Of 60,097 documents recorded by Allen County so far this year, 8,820 of those were e-recordings. A time savings of at least three minutes per document can be demonstrated when it is e-recorded instead of submitted in hard copy, equal to 441 hours of employee time saved in 2010 alone.
Those savings come from not having to perform manual task such as calculation of fees, digitizing of document pages and returning the paperwork via mail.
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