Online Vehicle Registration to be Down Thursday through Monday

Registering your vehicle online will not be possible starting Thursday, as there will be a statewide upgrade starting Thursday evening and lasting until Monday.

Missoula County Treasurer Director Kim Seeberger provides details of the planned outage.

“The State Motor Vehicle Division is going to shut down our system on Thursday night at 7:00 p.m. to do a major upgrade,” said Seeberger. “They will be bringing in the driver services into the motor vehicle software program, and they're hoping that all goes well and that they will be testing at first thing Monday morning and hopefully we will be back up and running in order to be able to do any motor vehicle transactions by Monday afternoon.”

Seeberger said almost all of their services will be unavailable until Monday, if all goes well.

“We will not be able to do any type of motor vehicle transaction, whether it's renewal or whether it's a titling,” she said. “We will not be able to look up information on the state motor vehicle system. We will have access to nothing while they are doing this upgrade. Hopefully we will be back up and running by Monday the 23rd in the afternoon.”

With COVID no one is allowed into the courthouse to physically get their business done, so all services are being done online. Seeberger describes how an online transaction would be done when the system is operating normally.

“If they purchase it through a dealership, they are issued a 40 day temporary permit, and the governor has extended those 40 day temporary permits up to 90 additional days because pretty much all the counties in the state are just inundated with titling,” she said. “If it is a private purchase, then you can go online and we can still issue a temporary permit for a customer who purchases through a non dealer.”

Seeberger said once the online payment has been completed, then new license plates will be issued.

“Once we get the paperwork in our office, we will send out an orange card with the website address on the back of it and the file number that has been assigned to that paperwork and the customer would then proceed by inputting the information in to start the process,” she said. “Once the clerk starts working that paperwork and finds that they have everything that they need, then they will send them an invoice for payment. Once we get the payment back then the plates would be issued and everything would be finalized.”

Find out more by visiting the following websites: missoulaclerk.us and titlebyemail.us