Summary

The Budget Billing process is used to calculate a budget billing amount on the customer accounts included in the batch. When the customer accounts are processed in a New Billings batch, the customers will be billed using the calculated budget billing amount rather than the consumption on meter.

There are two ways to process budget billing:

• Once a year
• Multiple times a year

Once a Year 

If you process budget billing once a year, there is no special setup required for the Budget Billing process. Just select a billing cycle and the process will calculate a budget billing amount on those customer accounts.

Multiple Times a Year 

If you process budget billing more than once a year, you should probably set up a separate billing cycle to process budget billings. When a billing cycle is processed in the Budget Billing process, all of the budget billing information on the customer accounts in the batch will be overwritten. So if you would like to calculate budget billings on some accounts in a billing cycle, but keep the budget billing amounts on the other accounts in the batch, you will have to create a separate billing cycle and assign the customers you would like to process Budget Billing to that billing cycle. Once the customer accounts have been processed in the Budget Billing process, you can return the customer accounts to their original billing cycles.

Step by Step

1     Create a list of accounts that you would like to move to budget billing.

• Having a list of customer accounts that you would like to change to budget billing will allow you to check the proof list created during the budget billing process for accuracy. If for some reason the Budget Billing process does not generate a budget amount for a customer account you will be able to identify and fix the issue.
  • If one of the selected accounts is using winter averaging, the winter average will not be used when calculating the budget billing.
• The list of customer accounts is usually stored on a spreadsheet or text editor program and should include the original billing batch of the customer accounts.

2     Select the services on the budget billing customer accounts that need to be budgeted.

• When a Budget Billing batch is processed, the system will check through all of the services attached to the customer accounts in the budget billing cycle. If the Budget Service toggle is checked on a service on the customer account, that service will be included in the Budget Billing process. This needs to be set up on each customer account individually and is not set up on the service.
• Open a customer account that you would like to add to the budget billing batch (UB> Maintenance> Account).
• Click on the Service Rates tab to view all of the service rates attached to the account.
• The third Create icon   will display Budget bill all active rates when the mouse pointer is hovered over it. Click this icon to open the Add To Budget window.
  • Select a Start Date from the drop-down menu. This field will default to the current date.
  • Check each Services to Budget toggle associated with the service you would like to include in the budget billing process.
  • Once you check a Services to Budget toggle, the service on the customer account will bill using the budgeted amount, not the actual consumption on the account. Click the Confirm icon   to return to the Service Rates tab.
• Click the Save icon   when complete.

3     Assign the budget billing customer accounts to the budget billing cycle.

• When processing a Budget Billing batch, all customer accounts within a selected billing cycle will be processed, overwriting any previous budget information on the customer accounts in that billing cycle. If you are processing customer accounts in the Budget Billing process throughout the year, the Budget Billing batch will act as a temporary place to process the budget billing customer accounts without changing the budget information on other customer accounts in the same billing cycle.
• Assign the budget billing customer accounts to the budget billing cycle by opening the Account Maintenance window (UB> Maintenance> Account).
• Open the Account tab and click the Billing Cycle field label to assign the account to the budget billing cycle.
• Click the Save icon   when complete.

4     Create a Budget Billing batch or open an existing batch.

• Select the Budget Billing palette in UB> Budget Billing. This will expand the Budget Billing palette and display the steps of the batch process.
• Modify an existing batch or create a new Budget Billing batch.
  • Select a batch number from the drop-down menu at the top of the Budget Billing palette to select an existing batch.
  • Select New from the Budget Billing batch number drop-down menu to create a new batch. This will open the New Batch window.
    • The Batch Month and Batch Year of the Budget Billing batch is used for reference only and is not necessarily the fiscal month and year the transactions in the batch will be posted to.
• Click the Generate icon to save the batch.

5     Generate the budget billing amounts.

• Open the Generate/Budget Billing window (UB> Budget Billing> Generate).
• Select the Budget Services that will be included in the batch.
• Select a generation method from the Generate By drop-down menu. Your choice in this field will determine if the Billing Cycle or Accounts fields are active.
  • If you chose Billing Cycle for the Generate By field, select the desired Billing Cycle. Click the drop-down menu to select the Budget Billing batch that you attached to all of the customer accounts you would like to process in this Budget Billing batch.
    • The budget information on all of the customer accounts in the selected billing cycle will be affected by the Budget Billing process. If there are customer accounts in the selected billing cycle that you do not want to process in the Budget Billing cycle, remove them from the billing cycle or create a new billing cycle and move all of the customer accounts you would like to process to that billing cycle.
  • If you chose Select Accounts for the Generate By field, select the desired Accounts by clicking the field label and choosing which accounts you would like to include in the budget billing batch.
• Select how you would like to calculate the budget information in the Calculate Using drop-down menu.
  • The Account History option will use the billings that have occurred in the date range specified in the Billing History From and To fields to calculate an average amount.
  • The Consumption History option will use the meter history that was read during the date range specified in the Billing History From and To fields.
    • Some organizations that generate budget billing information once a year will use this method once the service rates have be revised in order to use last year's consumption amounts and the new service rate structure. This will create a more accurate Budget Billing/Level Pay amount for the coming year because it will be based on the new rate structure.
• Enter an Adjustment if you would like to increase or decrease the budget total generated by a multiplier.
  • The Adjustment field can be used to alter the budgeted amounts if consumption is forecasted to increase or a decrease.
• The Precision field is used to define the number of decimal places that will be used when the budget is generated.
  • If the budget calculation results in a budget of $15.22, a precision set to zero will round the budget amount to $15.00. If the precision was set to 1, the budget amount will be $15.20.
• Select a Conversion To from the drop-down menu. If you are calculating the budget billing amounts using the Consumption History of the customer account, the Conversion To field will convert the history to the desired unit of measure before applying the amounts to the rate tiers.
• The date range entered in the Billing History From and To fields will define which meter reads or billing history will be used in the budget billing calculation.
• Enter a date in the Last Calculated Before field if you would like to exclude service rates with Start Dates or Recalculation Dates that fall after the date specified in the field.
  • Service rate Start Dates and Recalculation Dates are specified on the Service Rates Maintenance window (UB> Maintenance> Service Rate)
• Enter a Number of Billings value.
  • The value in this field will generally be used to divide the total billings/meter histories.
• In the Generate For field select which budgets will be included in the batch.
• Enter a Low Percentage and a High Percentage.
  • If the new calculated amount falls between these high and low percentages of the previous budget amount, the budget amount will not be adjusted for the following period.
• Check the Include YTD Difference toggle to include a % Difference column on the Modify screen. This column will display the difference between the current and the proposed budgets.
• Click the Confirm icon   to generate the batch.

6     Check for Exceptions.

• Open the Exceptions window (UB> Budget Billing> Exceptions).
• The Exceptions window will display any exceptions that resulted from the batch generate step.
• If the generate step did not produce any exceptions, an information window will appear.

7     Modify the proposed budgets.

• Open the Modify window (UB> Budget Billing> Modify).
• The Modify window will display all of the accounts included in the budget billing batch.
• To remove an account from the budget billing batch, highlight the account and click the Delete icon  .
• Each account will display the account number, customer name, total current budget and total proposed budget. The percentage difference will display the difference between the current and proposed budgets if the Include YTD Difference toggle was checked during the Generate step.
  • Click the Expand button next to an account to view the account details.
  • Make any desired adjustments to the Proposed Budget column.
• Click the Save icon   when complete.

8     Print the Budget Billing Proof List.

• Open the Budget Billing Proof List window (UB> Budget Billing> Proof List).
• The Proof List will display the proposed budget amount and the current budget amount of each service attached to the customers in the budget billing cycle.
• If a customer account or service on a customer account does not display on the proof list, make sure that the service is set up as a budget service on the customer account and the service is included on the Generate step of the Budget Billing process.
• The proposed budget is the amount that will be used on each billing and is the budget amount that will display on the billing statement.
• Click the Print icon   to process the report immediately or enter a date and time in the field next to the Print icon to schedule the report to generate at a later time. You can view the progress of the report on the Job Viewer window (SS> Utilities> Show Scheduled Jobs).
  • Click the Print icon drop-down menu and select Print Preview to preview the report before printing.
  • Click the Print icon drop-down menu and select Excel to export the report data to an Excel spreadsheet as unformatted data.
  • Click the Print icon drop-down menu and select Excel (Formatted) to export the report data to an Excel spreadsheet that includes much of the Springbrook formatting found on the printed version of the report.
  • Once the report is generated, you can also display the report using the View Reports window (SS> Utilities> View Report).

9     View the Proposed budget on the customer accounts.   

• After the budgets have been generated on the customer accounts in the Budget Billing cycle, you can view the proposed budget on the customer accounts on the Service Rates tab of the Account Maintenance window (UB> Maintenance> Account> Service Rates tab> Customer Information section> Proposed Budget field).
• Click the Modify icon   to manually modify the new proposed budget amount. After all changes have been made rerun the report.

10     Print the optional Budget Billing Letters.

• Open the Letters window (UB> Budget Billing> Letters).
• Select a Form from the drop-down menu.
  • The format and information included in the Budget Billing letters is determined by which form is selected.
  • Forms are created and maintained on the Forms Maintenance window (UB> Maintenance> Form).
• The Billing History From and Billing History To fields are used to filter the letters to those budget billing accounts with history that falls between the two specified dates.
• The Compatibility mode toggle is used to activate compatibility mode for legacy forms that don't use standard Springbrook forms functionality.
  • Springbrook does not recommend using Compatibility mode as it will disable a number of useful form features.
• Click the Print icon   to process the letters immediately or enter a date and time in the field next to the Print icon to schedule the letters to generate at a later time. You can view the progress of the letters on the Job Viewer window (SS> Utilities> Show Scheduled Jobs).
  • Once the letters are generated, you can also display the letters using the View Reports window (SS> Utilities> View Report).

11     Commit the Budget Billing batch.

• After the Proof List has been reviewed and any changes have been made, select Commit from the Budget Billing to commit the Budget Billing batch. This will open the Commit Budget Billing window (UB> Utility Billing> Commit).
• Click the OK button to commit the Budget Billing batch.

12     View the current budget on the customer account.

• Open the Account Maintenance window (UB> Maintenance> Account> Service Rates tab) to view the new budget information on the account.
• The new budget information will be in the Current Budget field in the Customer Information window.

13     Change the customer accounts back to their original billing cycles.

• Open the Account tabs of the customer accounts that have been processed in the Budget Billing batch in the Account Maintenance window (UB> Maintenance> Accounts> Account tab).
• Change the value in the Billing Cycle field back to the original billing cycle.