If you thought that many big companies and industries are operating at a near-perfect scale, you’d be wrong. Yes, bigger industries – especially ones that operate globally – tend to have more manpower and facilities to supplement their operations. But that’s also where the problem lies. With multiple payers and websites to operate, for instance, there are higher chances of committing accounting-related errors. Fortunately, there’s also a solution to this problem: centralization and automation.
By centralizing and automating the entire accounting process, it can enhance and improve efficiency and overall productivity. This concept is easily achievable using utility management or utility billing software. With this system in place, you can even avoid dangers in your utility bill like frauds, overcharges, inflated meter readings, and more. Utility billing software can significantly improve your utility management, which is why it’s essential to incorporate it into your business operations.
To shed some light on this idea, we will discuss what utility billing software is and why it proves to be a significant addition to any company. In addition, we will also mention some of the best utility billing software in 2021.
What is Utility Billing Software?
The utility billing software allows users to gain crucial knowledge about the utility services related to water, electricity, gas, sanitation, property, sewer, and other areas related to utility bill. The system includes services of meter and invoice management, as well as payment processing.
With this software in place, the users can put in both metered and non-metered service data such as garbage, water, wastewater, gas, electricity, sanitation, rents, mosquito control, street lights, sewer, cable, or any other type of utility fee that the users want to bill and collect.
Important Features of Utility Billing Software
You can’t call it utility billing software without acknowledging a few important features. Some of these must-have features include the following:
Usage Reports
This feature lets the user track their resource usage like electricity or water. The reports allow users to make excellent decisions with regards to their consumption of the indicated resources. As a result, the user can track the progress and save money at the same time.
Account Management
The account management page stores important customer information like names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, and user-defined fields. In most utility billing software, you can customize this feature depending on your needs.
Online Payment
This application also includes features like single payments for multiple bills and emailed recipients. This application will maintain records of all your previous transactions. At the same time, the customers also have flexible online payment options from the providers.
Flexible Rate Structures
Utility billing software includes multiple rate calculations, separate rate schedules, pricing options, and multiple tier blocks for different areas. All of these offers provide flexible and convenient rate structures that will prove useful to your company.
Meter Management
In both chart and graphical format, utility billing software views the complete usage history for any specific meter. In addition, it also has the option to print the bill for whatever purpose it may need to fulfill.
Move-in and move-out facility
This feature tracks the date when a customer is moving in and out of the location, which helps in billing the right customer.
Penalty Processing
With this feature, the user can define and create penalties for the customers who carry out payments after the given due date.
Mobile Work
This feature lets field service team members interact with office personnel in real-time. Keep in mind that this feature is designed specifically for both mobile devices and tablets.
Customer Portal
This feature has information that’s related to interaction history, account notes, usage statistics, and billing. The applications help improve customer relations by offering quick, efficient, and professional customer service.
24/7 Access
The user can log into their accounts wherever and whenever they want. With 24/7 access, users can focus on high-value tasks most of the time.
Benefits of Utility Billing Software
As you may already know, utility billing software offers a lot of useful benefits to its users. At the same time, it provides a ton of perks that will prove useful to any company that decides to incorporate one for their operations. Here are a few notable benefits that this software brings to the table:
- Provides useful and beneficial solutions to the customers.
- Competes in a highly liberalized market, bringing a competitive edge to any potential user.
- Improves customer experience and servicing, as well as the control of operational risks.
- Manages compliant processes for utility bill management.
- Keeps a copy of historical records for better customer support.
List of the Best Utility Billing Software
There are many options for utility billing software. But only a select few are considered the best. To help you decide which one is for you, we went ahead and did our research to give you five of the best utility billing software for 2021 and beyond.
WaterWorkslms
WaterWorkslms is a comprehensive utility billing software that allows users to establish and build the ideal water business. If you want to try it out, you’ll be happy to know that this software offers a 30-day free trial.
WaterWorkslms automates tasks like invoicing and making reminders. By shifting to this software, you could help create emailing bills all in a single platform. Right now, over 200 water utilities in the U.S. use and depend on WaterWorks every single day. It’s also convenient to customers since they can sign up via online and on any device. In addition, the bill run interface of this software is also easy to understand.
Users can add different payment options. WaterWorkslms allows payments from PayPal, Direct Debit from Amex, Mastercard, VISA, and other bank account types. Using this cloud-based billing system lets the customers have either a single meter or thousands of meters. Overall, this software paves the way for you to have a better water business.
Perks of WaterWorkslms:
- Bulk invoice generation
- Complete billing
- Superb customer support
- Customer portal
- State-of-the-art CRM
- Option to email bills to customer
- Customer notifications, labels, ad statements
- Professional reporting tools
- Metered billing
- Multiple user capabilities
- Service call management
- Powerful account management tool
- Meter management
- Online payment processing capabilities
Utilmate
Not to be mistaken with the word, “ultimate,” Utilmate is a professional utility billing software that makes the entire utility billing process easier for its users. Offering a 60-day free trial, there’s no reason not to give this software a try. It’s the all-in-one solution for services related to multi-tenanted business and even homes.
Utilmate is primarily intended as a cloud-based utility billing application for network operators, body corporates, utility billing agents, loT providers, Annual equivalent rate (AER), and TELCO’S. Its easy and convenient services help manage utility invoicing and efficient customer communication processes.
Users can even streamline the complex billing process using the advanced metering system offered by this powerful tool. It manages notable areas including cold and hot water, gas, and electricity.
The software also manages and keeps the online billing system under control. With Utilmate, users can resell water, electricity, and gas to their tenants effectively and efficiently.
Utilmate Perks:
- Multiple registration forms
- Registration action and status
- Role assignment and selection
- Default user role
- Anti-spam features
- User info and roles
- Custom email templates
- Multiple user accounts
- Membership directories
- Form builder
- Customizable fields
- Multi-user ready
- Real-time reporting
- Automated invoicing
- Customer management
- Collections
El Dorado
Utility companies can breathe easier knowing that their utility processes are managed better with Creative Technologies’ El Dorado software. For both billing, invoicing, and customer management, users find that this platform is simple and very affordable to use.
Users can track system transaction and overdue payments using the billing and collection management feature. Property owners can create or send bills to residents for different community services that include electricity, water, and gas with the help of multi-metered modules.
In addition, users also experience feature-rich products and professional-level support from the software and the El Dorado team. It’s the game-changing solution that helps aid municipalities, meter providers, utility providers, property management, and outsourced billing. It’s the perfect option for small to mid-tier utility billers.
Perks of El Dorado:
- Billing analysis and analytics
- Meter reading
- Online bill payments
- Usage tracking
- Biller portal
- Billing forms
- Print/mail houses
- Service order management
- Customer account management and tracking
- Invoice creation
- Multi-user capabilities
- Industry-specific data tracking and reporting
- Rate management
- Metered billing
Small Utility Billing System (SUBS)
SUBS is a utility billing software that packs a punch in terms of what it can offer as free software. This software is available to the Missouri Rural Water Association (MRWA) member system. This small utility system can electronically carry out the utility billing program in a simple and effective manner.
SUBS calculate billing for water, trash, sewer, and other notable utilities. Since it’s a web-based software, you don’t have to download and install a separate application. SUBS is also very secure, as only authorized users are allowed to access it. In addition, the application also allows flat and tiered rates, taxes, and other applicable fees.
Perks of SUBS:
- Print postcard bills
- 500 active accounts
- Password protected
- Meter and rate management
- Billing and invoicing
- Account management
- Service call management
What ReliaBills Can Do?
While not a traditional utility billing software, ReliaBills has all the features that make it one. This invoicing system provides a ton of features all geared towards helping you get paid. With a ton of features and invoice templates to choose from, you can guarantee that there will be an invoice that’s specific to your needs.
If you want to personalize your invoice, you can do so with ReliaBills. You can even incorporate your company logo and theme to make it even more unique. Once your invoice is ready, you can automate the entire process by scheduling it. Once everything is set, all you have to do is confirm the schedule and wait for you to get paid by your client. You’ll even get notifications via email on the status of your invoice. The best part about ReliaBills is that it’s 100% FREE. After creating an account, you can get access to most of its features. If you want more perks, you can upgrade to ReliaBills Plus for only $24.95.
Perks of ReliaBills:
- Easy invoicing
- Customer data management
- Estimates
- Recurring billing
- Payments
- Customer portal
- Collection automation
- Relevant reporting
ReliaBills Recurring Billing
While ReliaBills offers many features, as mentioned above, we would like to highlight its recurring billing capabilities. Apart from being a superb invoicing system, ReliaBills is also among the most effective and efficient recurring billing software available in the market today.
ReliaBills makes it easy to create, schedule, and send invoices for recurring transactions automatically billed on a variety of periods (monthly, quarterly, or annually). Recurring billing is an effective way to simplify sending out bills as you don’t have to spend time creating new ones every month; all you have to do is set up a new schedule, and your bills will be sent automatically.
The ReliaBills recurring billing also improves the efficiency of payment collection as companies can save time by having their invoices, statements, or other documents ready months in advance. With its recurring billing capability, ReliaBills makes it easy for businesses to send out bills automatically without the added hassle or cost.So, if you’re interested, try ReliaBills today and experience the difference for yourself! Create an account now or view our pricing options.
Benefits of Recurring Billing
Recurring billing offers a ton of amazing benefits that you can’t find in any other payment processing strategy. Here are some of the key benefits:
- Automatic Payments: Customers appreciate not having to worry about remembering to pay their bills on time. Automatic payments take that burden off their minds and ensure that they never miss a payment.
- Reduced Costs: Automating your billing process means you’ll spend less time processing payments, which in turn reduces your processing costs.
- Improved Cash Flow: By automatically billing your customers, you ensure that cash flow is more consistent and predictable from month to month. This allows you to manage your finances better and plan for future expenses.
- Fewer Late Payments: There’s less chance of late payments or missed payments with automatic payments.
- Improved Security: Avoiding manual processing means you won’t find yourself at the risk of human error when it comes to your billing process, which in turn reduces the possibility of security breaches.
Are You Ready to Switch to Recurring Billing?
If you’re still using the traditional way of billing customers, it’s about time you switch to recurring billing. It’s a more efficient, secure, and cost-effective way of doing business that your customers will love. Plus, with ReliaBills, you’ll have one of the top-performing recurring billing software at your disposal. So what are you waiting for? Try out ReliaBills today!
Wrapping Up
Utility billing is no longer an option for most utility businesses. It’s now an absolute necessity. If you want to make the most of our utility billing, make sure you take advantage of these utility billing solutions that we mentioned. Assess each option carefully to determine which one is the best for your needs.
