Umatilla County, Ore., has implemented eRecording of documents such as deeds and mortgages through Simplifile, an eRecording service.
According to Umatilla County Chief Records Officer Steve Churchill, the county decided to start eRecording to save money and to provide better customer service.
“My experience with eRecording through Simplifile has gone from one of being slightly hesitant at first to, ‘Why didn’t we start this sooner?’” Churchill said. “I love receiving one electronic payment from Simplifile for all eRecording submitted each day instead of having to process multiple customer checks. I also love being able to transmit a document back to a customer for correcting before it can be ‘accepted; for recording. Before eRecording, it could literally take months for a previously submitted paper document to be corrected and resubmitted.”
Title companies, banks, attorneys, lien fliers and other document submitters now will be able to electronically prepare, scan or upload documents and submit them to Umatilla County through Simplifile’s secure, online service for recording.
“There is no cost to the county, as customers will pay a nominal fee to Simplifile as the submitter to record each document with us,” Churchill said. “Eliminating the need to physically sort, route and open incoming mail, count pages, receipt individual checks, apply labels, pull staples, scan, verify, re-staple and mail back has reduced the turnaround time for a document from one week to a matter of minutes. Time spent by records staff fielding calls and processing email requests to provide document numbers as proof of recording is also reduced as eRecording customers receive a recorded digital image of the document capable of being reproduced in paper form.”
In 2014 Churchill’s office recorded 10,408 paper documents totaling more than 42,000 pages.
“I’m hopeful that we can achieve a 50/50 ratio for eRecording versus traditional paper recording by the end of this first year, and that the number only increases in the years ahead,” Churchill said.