Wednesday, August 26, 2015

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Adopting A Utility Billing Systems That Is Efficient

By Nancy Gardner


service invoicing software calculates water, energy or sewer revenues owed by the company based on the usage of these services. Automated system has many benefits over manual meter reading both to their customers and the utility itself. This utility billing systems has reduced the physical movement of suppliers to move from their stations to the location of meters and other data recording devices to take their reading.

Manual gauge reading has been widely used but is being replaced by automated meter readers. The personnel employed by these service companies are exposed to risks where the meters are in dangerous locations. Moreover, not all meters are located in areas where they are readily accessible. The meter readers in some instances have to deal with hostile owners and restricted access of other areas. This makes the process of meter reading lengthy such that the bills are not mailed to the customers in time. It also results to increased costs.

This system has reduced the volume of calls to the utilities call centers from customers lodging complaints because some concerns from customers are sorted out by the mere click of a button. In this way, the automated system has increased customer satisfaction.

The calls made to the center are analyzed and those that can be avoided with automation identified. Utilities that have adopted a utility invoicing software have reported substantial decrease in customer complaints and increased customer satisfaction.

As part of installing an automated reading system the utility will have to put together an accurate database of their meters and customers. Most of these utilities report many unregistered service connections or missing accounts from the old database. Therefore, illegal connections are removed or registered appropriately into the system to generate new revenue.

Automated invoicing software enables the utilities to avoid negative lawsuits. Utilities should strive to minimize the risks of lawsuits from an injured worker or customer. The security of the employees is threatened when they have to read meters located in dangerous areas or areas with difficult terrain.

Collection of revenues and customer payments can be managed by a strong service billing software. After the invoices and bills have been delivered to their clients, the software will offer several options for managing how the user will pay for the services rendered. Utility invoicing software will track all customers with outstanding debts and automatically charge them the penalties for late payments and even print out emails issuing notices to them.

Automated meter reading enable flexible schedules for reading these service usage thereby avoiding delays in summary billing of accounts. Summary billings are usually for customers who have multiple businesses within the area. Therefore, it necessitates the utility to hold bills of the individual businesses until all of their accounts in the summary billing are read. With automated billing software, all the accounts can be read on time enabling the summary bills to be provided to the customers promptly.

Customers with multiple locations are also well catered for in this system. The software will enable the utility to setup the multiple locations of this customer as belonging to a single user. Therefore, the customer will receive a summary invoice for all the accounts.




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