CC PACKET 06081993 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Members of the City Council • City of St. Anthony, Minnesota Utility Billing System The present utility billing system appears to becoming inefficient or outdated to properly service the City's requirements. The capacity of the system to efficiently handle billing procedures appears to have reached its limit with additional charges for storm sewer and water testing fees being implemented during the year. Presently, the utility billing clerk needs to manually input data for storm sewer charges for commercial and certain other accounts, i .e. , those accounts which do not have the normal or set rate applied to them. This is an example of the inefficiencies of the present utility system and results in an under-utilization or use of the utility clerk's time. In addition, the system does not provide a easy method of accounting for total charges related to a particular activity, such as storm sewer, fire lane or sprinkler and similar types of charges. These charges are combined and listed as a miscellaneous line item total for the billing period. A brief review of this area of the billing system with the utility clerk indicated that perhaps the capa- city of the system to handle additional billing items was limited. Another example is when adjustment reports are prepared for input to the financial records, the system does not appear to be retrieving all the information in the same format as the adjustments made by the utility clerk. As a result, the utility system's receivable balance does not always balance with the general ledger. One problem area appears to involve the accounting for closed or final utility bills. These accounts • are adjusted when final meter reads are received and the final balance due is deter- mined. When the new account is created, the old account and its balance appears to be deleted from the current account file and maintained in a separate file for these closed accounts. One change to consider would be to require the payment of the final amount prior to the closing of the account. The result would be that such accounts would be current and collection difficulties experienced with closed accounts would be reduced or eliminated. Potential recommendations to be considered are: 1. A manually prepared worksheet could be developed to account for adjust- ments or changes to utility accounts. This would help insure that all adjustments are being properly recorded in the financial records. This worksheet could be expanded to include current charges and payments to provide a method of reconciling the receivables reported on the utility system to the general ledger. This would assure that all charges, pay- ments and adjustments are being properly accounted for and recorded in the accounting records. 2. Investigate the compatibility of the utility billing package offered by the company providing the current financial accounting package. The cur- rent utility system was acquired in 1988 to bring utility billing proce- dures in-house, rather than being performed by a service bureau. Now that the City's accounting procedures are performed in-house, perhaps the utility system should be bought on-line with the financial package. 3. Inquire of the company servicing the current utility system with regard to system updates which would enhance the system. In addition, provide • the necessary training of personnel performing the utility billing and related functions.