Cascading - The answer to busywork
With so many moving parts involved in managing the utility invoicing on a property, it's no wonder that many parameters can change. For example, there can be a change in the price used for calculating utility expenses re-charged to the tenants, or the reference on an invoice line on the utility invoices needs to change for all the tenants in the building.
In iREMS, these changes and many more can be managed easily with the cascading feature used in utility invoicing. The underlying concept is that parameters such as the price or the invoice line reference can be configured on multiple levels in the system and the configuration on the higher level applies to the lower levels as well.
If cases are met where a specific configuration should override the higher level setup, only the more specific part needs to be configured separately.
This ensures that a single change with a wide blast radius won't require you to perform changes in numerous parts of the system.
Temporality allows you to focus only on invoicing
While it is true that most of the time a utility invoice is issued for a single month, in some cases the performance period must be adjusted. Various events can affect the performance period, a tenant can leave in the middle of the month, a unit can be closed, the utility meter might be shut down, etc.
In iREMS all these and more can be modeled, and the utility invoicing handles any temporal changes for you when the invoice is generated. This eliminates the need to keep track of any changes that can affect the invoice generation, as all the variables are handled for you.
Tailor your invoice to your client's requirements
We understand that clients can have a wide variety of requirements on what information they wish to be displayed on their invoices. To provide the necessary transparency, iREMS allows you to meet these requirements, by configuring a Metered Invoice Reference Template. The Template will govern what text will be displayed on each of the invoice lines on the invoice.
You can have any text on the invoice as you wish, and you can also combine your text with so-called Wildcards. Wildcards are interchangeable fields that are switched out on the invoice line to the actual relevant information when the invoice is generated. E.g. the [Meter ID] Wildcard will put the ID of the Meter on the invoice line from which it was generated from.
