FAQ
The questions councils actually ask.
Grouped by who tends to ask them — contract managers first, then the procurement and IT security questions that follow. If yours is not here, ask us directly.
The product
What it does, and what it deliberately does not.
What problem does Verdue actually solve?
It replaces the spreadsheet and the email inbox that most councils use to track whether contracted maintenance happened. Instead of approving an invoice for 180 services on trust, you have a live map of every site, its status against the schedule in the contract, and a verified record behind each completion.
What counts as a "site"?
Anything with a boundary you maintain — a park, a reserve, a sportsfield, a streetscape, a road corridor. Corridors matter here: they are long thin strips rather than parcels, and systems built around parcels handle them badly. Verdue stores real PostGIS geometry, so a corridor is a corridor.
How does Verdue know a job is overdue?
From the maintenance frequency configured for that site’s category during implementation, measured against the last verified completion. Category A parks on a fortnightly mow go amber before they go red, on thresholds set to your contract terms rather than ours.
Does Verdue score or rank our contractors?
No, and it never will. Verdue reports factual counts and rates with the sample size beside them, and states nothing at all where the sample is too small to support it. Judging contractor performance needs knowledge of contract context and site difficulty that software does not have. That judgement stays with your contract manager, and we do not supply a number that pretends to make it for you.
Can we log resident complaints in it?
Yes, from the Professional tier. An issue is logged against the site it concerns with severity, category, description and photographs, tracked through a status workflow, and closed against the service that resolved it. When a councillor asks what happened with a complaint, the answer is one screen.
Contractors
How the businesses on your contracts fit in.
Do our contractors have to change how they work?
They keep working the way they do now. What changes is how the record reaches you: instead of a photo folder and an email, their software submits a verified completion to your portal automatically.
What if a contractor does not use Stipa?
They are not excluded. Contractors on Stipa are connected with a signed webhook and start submitting in minutes. Other software submits through the same documented interface. Contractors with no software at all are set up with manual completion entry during onboarding. Verdue is a council system, not a lever to make your contractors buy something.
Do contractors pay for Verdue?
No. Contractors submitting completions to your portal are not charged by us. If a contractor separately chooses to run Stipa for their own job management and proof of service, that is their own subscription and their own decision.
Can a contractor see another contractor’s work?
No. Each contractor can see only the records they supplied. The full picture across all contractors exists only for council users.
What stops a contractor logging a job they did not do?
The boundary check. A completion is accepted only when the recorded GPS position falls inside the site polygon — near the park is not the park. Position, time, operator, service type and photographs travel with the record, and once submitted it cannot be edited. Corrections are appended with their own timestamp rather than written over the original.
Data, security and procurement
For the people who have to sign it off.
Where is our data stored?
In Australia. All storage, processing, background jobs and email delivery occur in the AWS ap-southeast-2 (Sydney) region — the same region used by the ATO, Services Australia and over a thousand Australian government agencies.
Is Verdue IRAP assessed?
No. AWS Sydney holds IRAP PROTECTED assessments covering 168 services, assessed by independent ASD-certified assessors, and Verdue runs on that infrastructure. Verdue itself has not been independently assessed, and we will not imply otherwise on a tender response. If your procurement requires an assessed application layer, tell us early and we will tell you plainly where we stand.
Can another council see our records?
No. Every row carries the council it belongs to and every query is scoped to the signed-in user’s council. There is no cross-council reporting surface and no administrative screen that aggregates one council alongside another.
What will you provide our IT security team?
AWS compliance documentation via AWS Artifact, our architecture and data-flow description, the privacy policy, and answers to whatever your assessment questionnaire asks. Start with the security brief and send us what it does not cover.
Who owns the data, and what happens if we leave?
The council does. Export it in full at any time, and take it with you if you do not renew. Compliance evidence is your record, not our leverage. Retention is configured per council rather than fixed by us, because councils keep this material far longer than a contractor would.
Getting started
What adopting it actually involves.
How long does implementation take?
Typically four to six weeks from GIS handover to go-live. The bulk of it is importing your parks and reserves data, configuring maintenance frequencies per category, and onboarding contractors. We do that work — councils do not self-serve through a setup wizard.
What do you need from us?
Your GIS data in whatever form you already hold it, your contract terms for service frequencies and categories, a list of contractors with a contact each, and about 90 minutes with the person who knows how the contracts are written.
Is there a free trial?
Not a self-serve one — an empty compliance map with none of your boundary data in it would tell you nothing. Instead we load a sample of your own sites for the demo, so what you are looking at is your LGA. Ask for that when you get in touch.
Can we start with one contract and expand?
That is what the Starter tier is for. Prove the model on a single contract or one department, then move up when you take it council-wide. Moving tiers takes effect from your next invoice.