Chapter 1.4 - Best Practices

Minimum Score

Specify a minimum score (MinimumScore) for an address or check the score returned for matching locations before using the jurisdiction. We recommend using locations with a score of 0.7 (for 70%) or greater.

  • Minimum Score (MinimumScore) of 0.7 allows for a reasonable number of typos in the input address
  • Increase or decrease the Minimum Score (MinimumScore) to allow for a higher or lower level accuracy
  • Setting Minimum Score (MinimumScore) to 1.0 returns only exact matches - this may not return a valid jurisdiction if the input address contains a small error
  • Setting Minimum Score (MinimumScore) to 0.0 returns all matches that AFC Geo SaaS Pro Soap can find, regardless of confidence in the results

For more information, see Address Geocoding and Scoring.

Special Tax Jurisdictions

Return Special Tax Jurisdictions (Options bitwise value 16) to get the most accurate jurisdiction. Only the city or county is returned when the Special Tax Jurisdictions option is not include.

For more information, see Special Tax Jurisdiction.

Numeric Street Number

  • Always start the street address (StreetAddress) with a numeric street number
  • Exception to the rule is for states that allow a one letter prefix on the street (for example, a "G" prefix on the street number is valid in Michigan)
  • A letter as a suffix on the street number is acceptable, but may not return valid results

Post Office (PO) Box

  • PO Boxes aren't supported because a PO Box is not considered acceptable by tax jurisdictions for tax situsing purposes
  • Zip Codes associated with a PO Box should not be used for geocoding because the zip code represents the physical location of a PO Box, not the location of the actual transaction

CASS Validation

Turn CASS validation on (CassCertify set to true ) to increase the accuracy of the address results.

Note

CASS validation is always be performed on Florida addresses, no matter what the value of the input flag.

Secondary Unit

When the input address contains an apartment or suite numbers, use SecondaryUnit to enter this information rather than including apartment or suite numbers at the end of the street address. The Secondary Unit (SecondaryUnit) is not using in the geocoding process, but including an apartment or suite number on the street address line can cause the score to be lowered to the point that a valid match is missed.

Endpoints

Use the endpoints ending in /2.0 so that any exceptions generated are returned to you and you can better handle the exceptions in your code.

Request

The order of input fields is important. AFC Geo requires a static order of input values, such as fields in inputAddress. Fields that are out of order remain unassigned, impacting the final geocoding results.

Options

Don’t use Street Number Snapping (Options bitwise value 1) or Postal Code Centroid (Options bitwise value 2) unless no results are returned. Using these options can cause incorrect results to be returned when the street database contains complete data.

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