Challenge
The policy of “utilities included” is quickly disappearing for many apartment communities. Management companies of multifamily properties increasingly practice utility rebilling—the transfer to renters of some of the costs associated with the use of resources such as water and sewage services. Management companies are motivated by both the wish to recover some of the increasing costs of these resources and by the desire to increase renter awareness of the true costs of resource use. Because utilities and municipalities send single bills for entire properties, management companies need to apportion utility costs among renters equitably.
Utility rebilling is a complex process that requires sophisticated methods to determine or estimate the utility usage of individual units in a multifamily apartment community. Like many multifamily property management companies, AMLI originally outsourced its utility rebilling by subscribing to a monthly rebilling service. Because of high subscription fees, AMLI decided to reduce costs by managing its own rebilling.
AMLI needed a system that would do the following:
- obtain data on apartment units from AMLI’s data warehouse
- distribute utility costs equitably among renters
- prepare utility bills for renters
- update AMLI’s Property Management System (PMS) with utility bill information
- allow accountants and onsite property managers to work together to prepare utility bills
Expert Object solution
Expert Object developed Utility Billing—a custom workflow management system that allows AMLI to manage its own utility rebilling.
AMLI’s accounting staff enters monthly utility bills for apartment communities into the Utility Billing System. Utility Billing queries AMLI’s data warehouse to obtain information on the apartment community, including unit occupancy and utility submetering information (if applicable). The application distributes utility costs among occupied units based on the information from the data warehouse. In cases where submetering information is not available, Utility Billing models utility usage with RUBS algorithms.
On-site managers and accounting staff collaborate using Utility Billing to verify bill information. When the bill information is approved, Utility Billing prepares printable versions of bills for renters and updates the AMLI PMS with utility billing information.
Result
The Utility Billing system allows AMLI to manage utility rebilling without outsourcing. Bringing the rebilling in-house saves AMLI tens of thousands of dollars in monthly subscription fees.
