If you are just starting to use UtilAbility, or if you would simply like a little additional assistance along the way, UtilAbility is here to help. We have included a handy Bill Cycle Guide function that was designed to help you identify and perform the tasks necessary to complete your entire utility billing process.
Before you can use the Bill Cycle Guide, you will need to provide some information about your requirements and preferences for each of your bill cycles. You provide this information on the Bill Cycle Parameters page, in the Bill Cycle Information Maintenance form. Here, you can select specific reports to use for Billing and Receipt Journals, Invoices and Shut off Notices.
You can indicate whether or not you wish to combine your Bill Calculation and your Bill Preparation functions. These functions are necessary to generate your bills and prepare the information before printing your invoices. You can also indicate whether or not you wish to calculate your late charges separately. This can be helpful if your bills are due before your next calculation date, but you want to apply late charges to any overdue accounts immediately. Finally, you can indicate whether or not you wish to use the Automatic Shut off Functions to generate and print shut off lists and notices. UtilAbility will use all this information to customize task lists for you.
Once you have entered your information, you can access the Bill Cycle Guide by clicking the Bill Cycle Guide menu item, under the Tools menu. When you open the Bill Cycle Guide, You can select from a list of Bill Cycles that you have defined. After you select your Bill Cycle, you will see a list of tasks customized for you, based on the information you have provided for that bill cycle. The list is even sorted for you, suggesting the order in which you can perform these tasks to progress through your billing process. You can use this as your personal check list to help you keep track of where you are, what you have done and what you still need to do to complete the process. You can quickly get additional help for any task or even execute any task in your list by highlighting that task and then clicking the appropriate button to the right of the list.
It should be noted that the list of tasks and their order of execution are merely suggestions and you are not limited to performing them as they are listed. You can perform any task, any time you wish.
Whether you are new to UtilAbility or not, it is always nice to know that you have a little reassuring help along the way any time you need it. Please check out our Bill Cycle Guide function to see how it can help simplify managing your utility billing process.