28 July 2025 

Thank you 

Thank you for all your efforts to ensure the 2025 rating year started as smoothly as possible.

We are here to help

We received a lot of enquires from councils about the new eligibility criteria for SuperGold Cardholders and the refund and adjustment processes. If you have any questions or need clarification, feel free to reach out to us at support@ratesrebates.govt.nz. Make sure you have checked the Council Handbook first before contacting us.

Request for refund due 1st week of August

Your council must submit a refund request within the first 5 working days in August. The monthly refund request must be completed and emailed to RatesRebates.OperationsDelivery@dia.govt.nz.

The Effective 1 July 2025 - Refund request form and Effective 1 July 2025 - Spreadsheet specifications can be downloaded from the electronic Rebate Management System (eRMS) under the 'Publications' tab.

We are running a computer programme over the refund (and adjustment) spreadsheet you email us. It is therefore important that the spreadsheet (csv or xlsx) exactly matches the specification. If your spreadsheet does not match the specification, we may reply asking that you amend and resubmit it within 1 working day - that will make sure your council does not miss out on that month's payment.

When you prepare your spreadsheet, it is important it matches the exact specifications:

1. the filename must be in the format of 'CouncilName_RatesRebates_YYYY_MM'. Note the underscore between each set of characters. For example, Ashburton_RatesRebates_2025_07.xlsx. While the refund request is emailed in August, the request is for rebates granted in July 2025, therefore 2025_07
2. the column headings must exactly match the specification
3. the values in each row must also exactly match the specification. For example, do not include $ symbols, and 'SuperGold Card YN' can only be Y or N regardless of the rating year.

Payment

Payment will be made to your council's bank account later the same month. We are aiming for the payment to be made about the 20th of each month.

An invoice will be emailed to the same recipients as used by eRMS. 

The invoice reference number will be different to eRMS. Invoices issued by eRMS have a 5-digit reference number. The new invoice reference number will look similar to "INV-RR-20250704-10131". The date is when our finance system received the payment file for processing, and the 5-digit number is a unique number allocated by our finance system.

Retirement of eRMS - Refund requests

As noted in the last few newsletters, the electronic Rebate Management System (eRMS) is being retired, after being in service since 2006.

All batches that were submitted to eRMS must have the refund request form emailed to RatesRebates.OperationsDelivery@dia.govt.nz by Friday 15 August 2025. That will ensure that the batch can be paid to your council's bank account via the eRMS, before eRMS is retired.

The eRMS request for refund form can be downloaded from eRMS under the 'Publications' tab.

We will provide further updates about the retirement of eRMS in this newsletter.

Review of new form and procedures

The 2025 rating year has seen the introduction of several operational changes.

Later in the year we will reach out to councils seeking feedback and suggestions on how we could make improvements and operational efficiencies to rates rebates processes.

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