Summary

Bill types determine what service rate will be used to bill the consumption on a meter. When a bill is generated on a customer account, the consumption on a meter will be billed using the service rate with the same bill type as the meter. If there are multiple service rates on the customer account with the same bill type, all of the service rates will apply. Bill types do not apply to non-meter devices such as backflow devices. 

Most organizations will create a single bill type for each kind of device (water, gas, electric, etc.) that will be billed. The primary advantage of creating multiple bill types for each kind of device is to add another grouping level to the service rates of each service. For example, if you already have 20 services and you would like to create another grouping of service rates, you can create that grouping using bill types. If you create two water meter bill types and assign those bill types to the service rates of the water service (since the service is not attached to the bill type, you can do this for any service), you have created a sub-grouping of service rates inside the water service rates.

The Bill Type of a Device

A bill type is not directly attached to a specific device; the bill type is attached to a device type and then the device type is attached to the device. The meter readings and consumption on that device are then associated with the bill type that was set up on the device type record.

A device type record represents a unique manufacturer and model of a device and is used to store the meter size and consumption/reading multipliers of a group of devices. A bill type is attached to a device type record in the Device Type Maintenance window (UB> Maintenance> Device Type> Open a device type> General tab> Bill Type field). All devices that are attached to the device type will be assigned the same bill type and only one bill type can be attached to a device type.

When a device is created using a service request or the Device Maintenance window (UB> Maintenance> Device), a device type is attached to the device. The bill type on the device type is then associated with the device and the meter readings and consumption on that device are attached to the bill type on the device type.

The Bill Type of a Service Rate

Bill types are attached directly to service rates (UB> Maintenance> Service Rates> Open a service rate revision> General tab> Bill Type field) and are not associated with services. Because bill types are not attached to services, you can attach the service rates of multiple services to a single bill type. This allows you to bill the consumption of a single meter using the service rates of multiple services.

For example, if the consumption of a water meter should bill both the WATER service and the WASTE WATER service, then a service rate attached to the WATER and WASTE WATER service should be set up with the same bill type as the meter you would like to bill. If the meter has a bill type of Water, then create a service rate with the Water bill type in both the WATER and WASTE WATER service.

When the customer account is billed

When a customer account is billed, the billing engine will link all of the service rates attached to the customer account to the devices with the same bill type. If there are multiple service rates attached to the same bill type, all of those service rates will be billed.

If the service attached to the service rate is not included in the billing (services are selected during the Generate step of UB> New Billing), the service rate will not be included in the billing. If the service rate has the same bill type as a device, then the consumption on that device will not be included in the billing. If there are multiple service rates with the same bill type as the device, then all of the service rates included in the billing will apply.