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Case Study staff parking

Suncorp & DIVVY: A case study in efficiency and savings

Discover how DIVVY Enterprise helped Suncorp make the most of their existing parking assets to deliver big savings for the business.

Suncorp, one of Australia’s largest financial services brands, operates a fleet of trade vehicles and manages the associated parking. In late 2017, Suncorp commenced a trial with DIVVY Enterprise at their 123 Albert St, Brisbane premises. The challenge was to efficiently manage the parking for their trade vehicles at the site, where there were two-thirds fewer parking bays than vehicles. Suncorp had been managing parking manually via spreadsheets, and to meet perceived demand, additional parking was being leased offsite – at great expense.

DIVVY’s trial got underway and the manual spreadsheets were eliminated, with DIVVY providing precise, accurate real time reporting about vehicles entering and exiting the onsite parking bays.

It wasn’t long before DIVVY established the patterns of usage and it became clear how the trade vehicles and their parking could be managed more efficiently. As a result, Suncorp achieved thousands of dollars’ worth of savings by terminating all additional offsite parking, as with DIVVY’s real-time parking bay management it was no longer needed.

Suncorp also made significant savings by downsizing their trade vehicle fleet, after DIVVY’s reporting showed that the fleet could be streamlined without compromising the business needs.

As well as understanding what DIVVY could deliver in terms of efficiencies and cost savings, Suncorp was keen to trial the DIVVY user experience. Would it be a user-friendly parking management solution for their business? The outcome was clear – DIVVY had helped deliver significant savings to the business and the system was easy to use. The trial was deemed a success and Suncorp rolled DIVVY out to its Brisbane Square premises as well.

In mid-2018, hot on the heels of the Brisbane success story, Suncorp expanded DIVVY into 10 Shelley St, Sydney office. Just as in Brisbane, DIVVY’s reporting established that fewer parking bays could be made to work harder with the DIVVY system.

DIVVY showed that not only could Suncorp use their existing parking bays more efficiently through real-time management with the DIVVY system, but the number of bays under lease also exceeded requirements. Suncorp was able to reduce the number of parking bays, thereby returning even more savings to the business. As well as managing Suncorp’s parking bays efficiently, DIVVY reporting is enabling Suncorp to manage the internal cost allocation of the car bays without fuss.

Suncorp is using DIVVY reporting to allocate parking charges to business cost centres, based on how long staff park for. The data is gathered over a period and projections made, allowing costs to be appropriately distributed between business units.

Suncorp also plans to unlock the Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) reporting feature of DIVVY reporting this financial year, allowing maximum efficiency at tax time with minimum effort.

Joseph Harmon, Parking Administrator for Suncorp, says

“Suncorp started working with DIVVY in 2017, in our buildings in Brisbane and Sydney, as we were looking for a better system to fully utilise our larger leased car parks and provide more accurate FBT reporting. Suncorp uses DIVVY to provide convenient and reportable parking to our team members with tool of trade vehicles. The biggest change we’ve experienced since partnering with DIVVY is the ability to have online, accurate reporting of parking usage, along with better utilisation of our car parks. This enables our teams to book leased parks for specific time frames and provides greater flexibility and efficiencies for our business. We are currently looking at expanding the service to our other buildings”.

Suncorp is happy to recommend DIVVY to other businesses looking to improve their parking systems

For further information on this case study, please contact our sales team at sales@divvy.com.au

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News

How your business can save on its car parking spaces during COVID-19

To help businesses navigate this difficult time, here are our top tips for reducing car parking costs during the coronavirus pandemic. 

1. Pay less Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) 

Did you know that your business could be paying less FBT on employee car parking at the moment? If your staff car parking is not meeting all the ATO’s conditions, it could be exempt or receive a reduction from FBT – for example, if car parking is provided for less than 4 hours between 7am and 7pm. 

If your company has staff working from home, and employee parking is going unused, it is worth investigating whether that parking is currently exempt from FBT. DIVVY Enterprise clients can determine exact car parking usage in an instant with DIVVY’s reports portal and potentially save thousands during this time. 

2. Get an exemption on the Parking Space Levy 

Sydney, Melbourne and Perth all have versions of the parking space levy (known in Victoria as the congestion levy), an annual tax payable by owners of parking spaces located in specific high-density districts. 

As part of the NSW Government’s tax relief measures to assist businesses impacted by COVID-19, Revenue NSW have announced that PSL payments will be deferred until 30 September 2020. At the time of writing, the Victorian and Western Australian governments are yet to make similar announcements. 

Now is a good time to investigate whether your parking spaces are eligible for exemption from the parking space levy. In NSW an unused casual car parking space – that is, a car space available for public parking – is excluded from the PSL calculation. 

If your business has car spaces listed for public parking on DIVVY Marketplace that are not being used to their full capacity at the moment, investigate whether you are eligible to reduce your PSL payment. The DIVVY reports portal can provide the usage records required to apply for an exemption. 

If you’re a building tenant with car parking on your lease, there’s a good chance your landlord is benefiting from the PSL deferral. Consider asking them to pass the current deferrals and savings on to you too.  

3. Make money from your empty car parking spaces 

You could be generating revenue from parking spaces left empty by staff working from home. If you have DIVVY access controllers installed in your car park, consider listing your empty car parking spaces for public bookings on DIVVY Marketplace. There are still people commuting to work who need safe and secure parking, and every Marketplace booking returns revenue to your business. 

If your car park has a ticket validator or valet service entry system, your vacant parking spaces can be listed for public booking on our parking aggregator site Justbooked. List parking spaces for free and take advantage of a new marketing channel. 

4. Get efficient with DIVVY Enterprise 

The DIVVY Enterprise parking management system helps businesses get the most out of their parking at any time, and it can make life that bit simpler and safer during COVID-19.   

DIVVY Enterprise uses contactless QR code technology to provide access to car parks, doing away with the unsafe practice of sharing physical access cards. 

The ‘Free Up My Space’ feature offers the ultimate flexibility for staff parking management, even more, useful in rapidly evolving situations like the coronavirus pandemic. Employees with allocated parking who are working from home can make their parking space available for those staff that need to continue to travel into the office and who don’t normally have access to parking. 

The ‘Book On Behalf’ feature makes it easy to enable access to parking for employees or others visitors who don’t usually park on-site, or who usually work from another site, but need access during COVID-19. 

DIVVY Enterprise uses secure cloud-based technology so all these features, plus Enterprise’s multitude of other functions, can all be performed remotely, meaning staff working from home can continue to manage and monitor parking efficiently and with ease. 

*Please note DIVVY does not provide financial advice and we recommend you seek advice from your financial advisory or accountant.

We’re here to help. For more information, please contact Kat Fowler, DIVVY’s Marketing and Communications Manager at kat@divvy.com.au.  

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News

How DIVVY is helping businesses navigate COVID-19

There’s no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic has touched the life of every Australian and had an impact on every Australian business.  

Since the first lockdown in March, it has been a time of great change and uncertainty. As individuals and businesses, we’ve needed to draw on our resilience and adaptability.  

Here at DIVVY, we’ve been focussed on looking after our team and supporting our customers. We’ve also been finding new ways to help businesses get back to work as they navigate the new normal.  

Our car parks 

Since the pandemic took off in Australia, we’ve been working more closely than ever with our building owners and parking listers. We’ve been staying abreast of their COVID-19 policies and procedures to ensure safe and healthy car parks. 

Our Enterprise customers 

Our Enterprise system is helping businesses with vacant employee parking to increase efficiencies during COVID-19. It generates reports quickly and easily. The reports help businesses investigate whether they are eligible for a reduction in Fringe Benefits Tax or an exemption from the Parking Space Levy. Click here to read more about how your business can save on its car parking spaces during COVID-19. 

DIVVY Enterprise features like Book on Behalf and Free Up My Space allow businesses to manage changing employee parking needs as the pandemic evolves. The system uses secure cloud-based technology, so it can be operated from anywhere.  

It’s been an opportune time for our Enterprise customers with parking listed for public booking on DIVVY Marketplace. The demand for public parking is on the rise as people return to their workplaces but choose to avoid public transport. 

The contactless DIVVY pre-book parking system offers drivers peace of mind. There’s no handling of cash, pulling parking tickets, using payment machines or touching any shared surfaces at all with a pre-booked DIVVY car park.  

Optimising bookable assets through smarter technology 

For more than twelve months now, our employees have been entering and exiting our offices using contactless DIVVY access technology

Contactless access has never been more relevant. We’ve seen an increased focus on our technology’s ability to provide contactless access to bike lockers, end of trip facilities, meeting rooms and more. 

After witnessing the challenges faced by businesses during COVID-19, we took the booking platform technology that works so well for parking and adapted it for a range of new applications.  

Queuing and Contact Tracing Platform 

Our Queuing and Contact Tracing Platform allow any business that is visited by the public to communicate with its customers: 

  • its peak periods 
  • its busiest and quietest days 
  • in the event of queuing, the wait time to enter the venue 

The Platform makes it easy for customers to plan their visit before they leave home, helping them to avoid busy periods, save time and visit with peace of mind.  

The Platform has pre-book capabilities, enabling customers to book their visit in advance to avoid queuing. It allows businesses to control the time, duration and number of customers accessing their premises, and even manage separate areas within the venue. This helps businesses to adhere to venue capacity limits and maintain social distancing within their premises.  

Our Queuing and Contact Tracing Platform can also capture visitor contact details quickly and easily. It makes it possible to track interactions and crossovers between visitors and employees, helping with contact tracing should it be required. For those businesses conducting health attestation questionnaires, our Platform makes it quick and simple to collect and store visitors’ declarations of symptoms.  

Find out how DIVVY are helping Australian supermarket giant Woolworths take care of their customers with their Q-Tracker tool here.  

Back to Work Module 

To help businesses safely transition their staff back to their workplaces, we have launched our new Back to Work module. It allows businesses to manage how many staff will be in the workplace at any one time, as well as maintaining a digital record of staff attendance in the workplace.  

Staff use the DIVVY app to book a day and time to come into work. The booking parameters – how many staff can access the workplace, on which days and at which times – are set by the business. Just like the DIVVY parking experience, staff use a QR code on their phone for contactless entry to the workplace. 

It makes it easy for businesses to meet public health directions and comply with COVID-19 Safety Plans in their workplaces. The module has already been successfully adopted by TOGA Far East Hotels at their head office in Ultimo, Sydney.  

We are here to help. For more information, please get in touch with our friendly team at sales@divvy.com.au.