Billing utilities

Original post

In our market, some utility bills remain in the owner's name (mostly water and sewer, sometimes trash). These are billed to the tenants in Innago, but we've found the process to be very time consuming. First, the data entry is rather cumbersome because each field must be manually selected, even if there is only 1 option (e.g. on a SFR, there is only 1 "unit" yet it doesnt auto-default to that and we have to manually select it). Also, common keyboard shortcuts do not work, like using the tab key to cycle to next input, which can help speed through the process. I know this sounds like whining over minor details, but we always look for ways to streamline our workflow, especially for recurring activities like this- when you have to do it every monthly and across many properties, it adds up to be a lot of time.

So just curious- does anybody have a good system to streamline billing of utilities? If I had a magic wand, there'd be a utility portal in innago where it shows a matrix of all properties that require utility billing and each month would have an input box to enter the dollar amount for the associated utility, which then automatically gets applied to their bill... so you could easily run down the list and type in values all on the same screen. This screen would also only have entries available for the specific properties and utilities that you've pre-configured to be billed for (including frequency- monthly, quarterly, etc), so it will also double as a reminder by flagging cells where billing hasn't been input for a particular utility in a particular month...

As an alternative, I realize we could set a consistent monthly allowance for these utilities and either build that into rent or add a recurring bill, but that also requires monitoring to ensure tenants haven't exceeded the allowance, so the fairest approach is to bill based on actual usage...

Reply by Alex Toffler

My apologies for the late reply here, but I can share some insight on how I see other users doing this in Innago. And firstly I will say, this is something we have looked into a lot and we are still working to find the best way to be able to bill utilities in Innago. I can pass along what you said to the product team and definitely think there is something there! Thank you for that.

The main workaround I have seen people do is basically just billing one month behind for the utilities by going in and editing the next future month's invoice to include the line item for this tenant's utilities from the previous month. So if you received and paid the August bill's today, for example, you can go in and edit each tenant's September invoice to include those line items. This is definitely a little time consuming and manual which I understand can be frustrating.

Our main problem with being able to add this feature so far has been that the utility amounts you pay are constantly fluctuating and there are a wide range of utility companies we'd have to be able to sync with to get those amounts to show up directly in Innago. It is something we really do want to find a better solution for though so we appreciate your feedback, and i just wanted to give you background of our process with it.

Feel free to reach out if you want to discuss further or have any questions!

Reply by Linda Kosley

Here are some changes/updates I would appreciate to the invoicing process. When adding to an existing invoice or creating a new one, I should be able to put in a letter (in the dropdown area) and it should produce the items that start with that letter. Once selected, it would be helpful to be able to tab over to the next field instead of needing to click each field. Along with that, if there is only one option, it is not helpful to have to select each field - we should just be able to tab through to the next needed field.

It would also be helpful to have a Billing section that is more user friendly. I am processing multiple bills for over 45 properties so going in & out of each property is a bit tedious - adding to that, the system brings me back up to the first property after every transaction is saved so I am needing to "start the process" all over again after each property is billed.

I think an overall view and accessibility to quick processing would be very helpful.

Finally, I would appreciate if the popup screen for adding dual verification that appears every time we log in would go away. We don't want to add that feature since we have multiple users and that would most-likely add additional steps.

Thank you for having this space to give feedback!

Reply by McIntosh Bloom

Yes I totally understand how a sync process would be nearly impossible since each utility provider has a different process. So really the part that Innago controls is how to manually input utility charges. Currently it's pretty clunky and time consuming, so some sort of utility billing portal would be a major improvement over going into each individual property. For example, the lease could be setup to toggle utility details (which utilities are billed by landlord and the billing frequency- monthly, quarterly, annually). This would generate a utility billing matrix where each property is a row, and each month is a column, with tabs to toggle between various utility types (gas, water, sewer, plowing, etc). The billing amounts could be quickly input across a portfolio in a fraction of the time it takes to go into each property. Plus, by telling the software which utilities should be billed for, it creates a to-do list of sorts or reminder for when to bill each tenant.