As of the 1st of January 2016, applicants for social housing do not only have to satisfy certain income limits, but also need to comply with new appropriateness standards ensuring that their income fits the rent. The web application WIS*kit – of which development was commissioned by Amsterdam-based housing corporation Eigen Haard – simplifies the allocation process and carries out complex income calculations.
“The WIS*kit allows us to make fewer mistakes and generates data enabling uniform reporting for accounting. All laws, rules, and knowledge required for proper allocation are integrated into the web application” says Marlies van den Berg, rental agent at Eigen Haard. “This is the reason why we called the application WIS*kit, in which WIS stands for ‘Woning Informatie Systeem’. It helps our rental agents to make a correct calculation and come to a proper allocation decision. In doing so, we carry out the law accurately”.
Execute process in a couple of steps
Depending on the client-specific situation, rental agents walk through the WIS*kit in a number of steps. The application carries out the calculations required for he European income test and the appropriateness test.
“We thereby kill three birds with one stone: the test on income, the test on appropriateness, and accounting” continues van den Berg. “Because all considerations are captured in an insightful PDF file. This file is all we need as substantiation for audits.”
Extensively tested with colleagues. More corporations follow.
The WIS*kit has been extensively tested by Eigen Haard and fellow corporations Stadgenoot and Rochdale. The application was developed jointly and generically. The intension is to collectively develop the WIS*kit further in the future. That way, corporations will follow a more uniform method, which creates clarity for the customer.
Benefits of WIS*kit in short
Compared to the current, mainly manual method, the WIS*kit offers the following benefits:
- helps employees to correctly make allocation decisions
- simplifies the allocation process
- makes allocation more transparent and automatically generates reports, which can be used by the accountant
- contributes to a uniform allocation method. This also speeds up audits
- new employees are on-boarded more quickly
- suitable for different levels: calculating the appropriate income for advertised rent, or calculating an appropriate rent for a given income.
WIS*kit has been developed by Knowledge Values, partner in high quality knowledge solutions.