Before you make any decisions please read the below and ask any question you have using the live chat facility - Please book a session with our team if you need to walk through the decision-making process with someone, we are here to help.
Here is a short video explaining the process 👉🏻 Data Updater - Explained
**All decisions must be made in the same session, you cannot save and come back to it, so please allocate enough time to complete the process.
The data updater provides a way for Business Improvement Districts to synchronise the content of their Vicinity database with non-domestic rates data (NNDR) provided by their local authority partner.
During the first step of the updater process, Vicinity iterates over each row of data the council provides and tries to find a matching record in Vicinity using a property reference number and a combination of billing reference and liable party name.
Based on what Vicinity finds, users are presented with a series of decisions to make.
Decisions are grouped into three main types, and each type has a specific set of actions, as follows:
Create
Rationale:
Vicinity was unable to find a record in its database that matched the council row using the property reference number. By default, Vicinity assumes that this is a new hereditament and intends to create a new Business record.
Actions:
Create: you choose to create a new Business record in Vicinity using data from the council row (this is the default decision and will be green)
Match: you choose to find an existing record from Vicinty to update using the council data. You can only choose from inactive database records, or records that have been flagged for archiving (see the Archive section below.) You should use this if a Business has moved and you want to carry People and Activities to the new hereditament, or if the new hereditament is the result of an old one splitting, and you want to carry an existing record over.
Ignore: you choose to ignore the council row completely. You should use this if the hereditament is outside of the BID area, for example.
Replace
Rationale:
Vicinty was able to find a record in its database that matched the council row on the property reference but couldn't match on the billing reference (or on the liable party name, if your council changes billing references regularly and you have asked for us to check the name too.) By default, Vicinity assumes that the existing record in the database should be marked as inactive, and a new Business created from the council row.
** It is important that you click to 'Update' the record rather than 'Replace' if you think it is the same business or it is just a change in liable party, levy, or RV etc, if you leave the decision on 'Replace' the system will archive the existing records and a new one will be created. If in doubt - Update
Actions:
Replace: you choose to make the existing Vicnity record inactive and create a new Business from the council row (this is the default decision and will be green)
Update: you choose not to archive the existing record and to update it using the council row instead.
Archive
Rationale:
Vicinity was unable to find a matching record from its database in the council's data, based on property reference. By default, Vicinity assumes that this hereditament has left the BID area and the related Business is to be marked as inactive.
Actions:
Archive: you chose to mark the record in Vicinity as inactive. It will remain in the database but will not be returned unless the user specifically asks to see inactive records.
Ignore: you chose to ignore Vicinity's recommendation and the record remains active in the database.
You can search our collection of help articles here 👉🏻 Vicinity Help Desk or we have a useful video of using the system basics here 👉🏻 Back to Basics