Utility payment solutions help your residents pay for essential services such as water, gas or electricity. These services are vital to everyday life – they power our appliances, heating & cooling and work.
A product is a set of accounting details and management reporting that you map to the payment transactions for a particular provider institution.
Streamlined Billing Process
Whether your customers pay for their electricity, water, waste or gas, they deserve a seamless payment experience. Providing that, along with the ability to track consumption and reap early payment discounts, is an important part of your business.
Utility companies that score well in customer satisfaction metrics often have more robust business processes, better financials and stronger resources. A streamlined billing process helps achieve these goals, while eliminating the costs of paper bills and manual processing.
Utility payments are processed using products that are defined for specific utility provider IDs, accounting details and rates for the type of service being paid for. These can be configured in the ARC maintenance screen for each type of product. This enables flexibility to set penalties at account or service level, including advance discounting and resources for event rating. This also provides a fast insight into your recurring and usage revenue. Using these analytics, you can manage your cash flow and profitability more efficiently.
Automated Payments
A good utility billing solution should offer customers a variety of digital payment options that can be used to pay for recurring utilities. Some of these include credit cards, debit cards, or ACH payments. These automated payment services can help you manage your billing and collection process while boosting customer satisfaction and getting your bills paid faster.
Using the product definition that you have created, you can create a utility payments product to define a particular kind of transaction for processing payments made by customers in favor of a particular utility provider. You can then map specific accounting details and GL accounts to the product for management reporting purposes.
This is the best way to reduce manual processes and improve your efficiency while delivering an outstanding customer experience. It also reduces late fees and disconnections by motivating your customers to pay their bills sooner. Additionally, it eliminates the need for billing exceptions, account open-close administration, and audits.
Real-Time Reporting
Real-time reporting offers a unique opportunity to gather performance data and relay it to users in an easily accessible manner. This data is often retrieved via a software platform or customer portal, and provides up-to-the-minute results.
Immediate access to billing information enables customers to understand their usage and costs more clearly. This transparency builds trust and encourages a positive supplier-customer relationship.
When utility suppliers receive payments, they need to process them quickly and accurately. Whether to resolve an overpayment, return security deposits or pay damages and efficiency bonuses, uncashed checks can create a significant financial burden.
With real-time reporting, utilities can provide their customers with a variety of convenient payment options based on their preferences – including ACH, RTP, Venmo, Zelle, prepaid cards or their online banking app. This greatly reduces the need for customer support and helps drive down service costs. It also improves the predictability of incoming payments for utility companies. Moreover, it reduces the need for paper receipts and other documentation.
Enhanced Security
Your utility bill payments are secured with encryption technology that converts data into ciphertext so only authorized users can read it. This keeps customer billing information private, and protects your customers from unauthorized transactions. It also helps you meet compliance regulations and safeguard your residents’ data.
Many utility companies offer a variety of online payment options to give their customers greater flexibility and convenience. They may allow you to make a credit card or ACH transaction through their website, or they might send you an email with a secure payment link to use from any computer.
Some utility companies may require you to pay a deposit or provide a letter of guarantee before connecting your service, but that is legal only if they consider your spouse’s credit history when making this decision. You can contact your state consumer protection office for more information. Also, make sure your online bill payment system is PCI compliant to avoid a costly cyberattack.
