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A water business, an energy retailer, a network operator or a smaller utility such as an embedded network or a regional water service runs on two kinds of records: customer accounts and physical assets. The billing system holds the accounts, meter reads and payments. The finance system holds the ledger, purchase orders and supplier invoices. Work orders for leaks, faults, connections and maintenance live somewhere else again, often with contractors doing the work. Finance officers, billing and customer service staff, and works coordinators spend much of the day moving information between them: reconciling the bank, applying payments, processing invoices, chasing exceptions. The billing and finance systems already do the core work, and we build around them rather than replace them. Automation takes the matching, checking, chasing and filing around those systems and runs it as fixed, tested software. AI is used only where something has to be read, such as a remittance, a contractor’s invoice or a customer’s email, and its output is checked before anything is posted to an account or the ledger.
These are patterns we see in utilities businesses, not client case studies. Your process gets its own map in the assessment.
Bank reconciliations and customer payments
A utility receives thousands of small payments through several channels: BPAY, direct debit, card payments online and over the phone, Centrepay deductions, counter payments through an agent, and the occasional cheque or direct transfer with a reference that does not match anything. Each channel produces its own file, and each lands in the bank as a lump sum on its own timetable. A finance officer downloads the statement, compares each deposit with the channel file behind it, applies the payments to customer accounts and parks whatever cannot be identified in a suspense account to chase later. The matching follows rules, so it runs as fixed software. Each bank line is matched to its channel file and settlement total, individual payments are applied to customer accounts in the billing system using your allocation rules, and anything left over is listed with its age so it does not sit in suspense for months. AI reads only the awkward items, such as a transfer with a mistyped account number or a remittance from a body corporate paying several accounts at once, and suggests the match. The finance officer approves the reconciliation each day, and any receipt the rules cannot place stays with them.
Contractor invoices against work orders and purchase orders
Much of a utility’s field work is done by contractors: civil crews for main breaks, electrical contractors, plumbers, traffic control, vegetation management, meter installers. Each sends invoices in its own format, sometimes covering dozens of jobs on one document, and accounts payable matches each line to a work order or purchase order and checks the rate against the contract’s schedule before it is paid. Capturing the invoice is well served by packaged tools, and where you already use one we take its output. The matching after capture is rule work. Each line is checked against the work order, the purchase order and the schedule of rates within the tolerances you set, approval goes to the person who raised the work, and the cost is coded to the right asset, project or operating budget. AI reads only the invoices the capture tool cannot. The works coordinator confirms the work was completed before payment, and any variation, extra item or overrun goes to them to accept or query.
Customer accounts and billing
Before each billing run, the billing system flags reads that look wrong: a read lower than the last one, consumption far above the usual pattern, an estimate where an actual read was expected, a meter that could not be accessed. A billing officer works through the list, checks the history, looks at photos from the meter reader and decides whether to bill, re-read or estimate. Sorting the list follows rules, so it runs as fixed software, with each exception grouped by type, the account history and any reader notes attached, and the clear-cut cases, such as a known vacant property, handled the way you have defined. AI reads the meter reader’s free-text notes and suggests a category. The billing officer decides every bill that is held, re-read or estimated, and a possible leak is referred to the customer and the field team by a person.
When a property is sold or a tenant moves, the account has to close at a final read and open in the new name, and the paperwork comes from settlement agents, conveyancers, property managers and customers, each in their own form. Someone keys the details into the billing system, books the final read and chases whatever is missing. AI reads the notice of sale, the agent’s email or the customer’s form and drafts the change, which a customer service officer checks. Fixed rules then book the special read, close and open the accounts on the right dates, send the standard letters and chase any details still outstanding. Disputed dates or responsibility for charges go to the customer service team leader.
Customers who are struggling ask for a payment plan or more time, and eligible customers apply for state government concessions and rebates. Tracking the plans, checking that instalments arrive, applying approved concessions and sending reminders is steady, rule-based work across the billing system and the payment files. Missed instalments are flagged the day after they fall due, reminders follow the schedule your policy sets, and approved concessions are applied and recorded against the account. AI reads concession forms and customer emails to draft the record. Whether a customer gets a plan, more time or hardship support is decided by your staff under your own policy and obligations, and no restriction or collection step is taken without a person approving it.
Field work, assets and contractors
A burst main, a blocked sewer, a fallen line or a damaged meter is reported by phone, email, web form or a council officer, often more than once. Someone in customer service writes the work order, checks whether one already exists for that address, and passes it to the works team. Where your asset management or field service system already takes reports directly, we feed it rather than duplicate it. AI reads emails and web reports for the location, asset and problem and drafts the work order, and fixed rules check for existing jobs at the same address and set the priority category you have defined. A person in the works team confirms the priority of anything urgent, and anything that suggests a safety risk goes straight to a person by phone.
Every contractor needs current insurance certificates, the licences and tickets their work requires, and your site inductions, and each of those expires on its own date. The register is usually a spreadsheet kept by procurement or the works office, and an expired certificate tends to be noticed after the contractor is already on site. Contractors upload their documents to a register, AI reads each one for the type, cover, issuer and expiry date, and anything unclear goes to the contracts officer to confirm. Reminders go out well before each expiry, and a work order cannot be issued to a contractor whose documents are out of date without a person overriding it. Whether a contractor is fit for a particular job stays with your contract managers.
Pipes, fittings, cable, meters and chemicals are ordered constantly, and capital works projects run for months with costs arriving from suppliers, contractors and internal labour. Purchase orders are raised by hand from requests, and project managers keep their own spreadsheets because the ledger is always a few weeks behind. Raising and tracking orders follows rules, so it runs as fixed software: requests come in through a simple form, orders go to approved suppliers at agreed prices, and each order is chased until it is confirmed and delivered. Committed and actual costs are pulled from the finance system to each project on a schedule, so the project manager and finance see the same numbers. AI reads supplier replies for changed dates and prices. Approvals follow your delegations, and any substitution or price change goes to the person who raised the order.
Finance and the back office
Alongside customer bills, a utility invoices developers for connections and headworks, councils and other agencies for shared works, and businesses for trade waste or other services. These invoices often sit outside the billing system, in the finance system or a spreadsheet, and someone raises each one, sends statements and chases overdue amounts. Raising invoices from approved agreements, sending statements on a schedule and escalating overdue accounts at the stages you set all run as fixed software. AI reads the developer’s or agency’s replies and remittances to suggest a match and pick out disputes. The finance officer decides how a disputed invoice is handled and approves any credit or write-off.
Each month, finance reconciles the billing system to the ledger, accrues unbilled consumption and contractor work, and builds reports for management and the board on revenue, debtors, capital spend and operating costs. Much of the reconciliation and layout is the same every month, so the extraction, the control totals and the report templates run as fixed software on a set day. The billing-to-ledger reconciliation lists every difference instead of a single variance. AI drafts a few lines on what changed for the finance manager to edit. The figures come from your systems, not from AI, and any report to a regulator or the board is reviewed and approved by the person accountable for it.
The accounts payable, customer service and works inboxes hold supplier invoices, remittances, settlement notices, concession forms, contractor timesheets and customer complaints, all mixed together. Someone reads each message and forwards it, and a message that waits can mean a late payment, a missed final read or a frustrated customer. AI classifies each email and matches it to the customer account, the supplier, the work order or the project. Fixed rules then route it to the right team or straight into another automated process. Complaints are routed to a person, and anything the classifier is unsure of goes to a review queue for a person to sort.
Retyping between billing, finance, asset and field systems
A new connection is entered in the billing system, again in the asset register, again in the field service system and again in the finance system when the developer is invoiced. A contractor’s completed job is recorded in the work order, typed again onto the invoice approval and coded again in the ledger. A change made in one place rarely reaches the others, so an asset can be in service without a billing account, or a job can be paid twice. Each hop looks small, so nobody measures it as one process. Almost all of it is fixed software, with field mappings between systems, a scheduled sync, reconciliation checks and an exception queue for records that do not line up. Where a system has no way to exchange data, the entry stays with a person, and we prepare it so it can be checked and entered quickly. AI is used only to map free-text notes into the right field. We measure the whole chain as one process first, so the cost is visible before anything is built.
If one of these costs you real money every month, describe it in four answers.
Thinking about what a process actually costs you?
The assessment is small, fixed-price, and tells you the real number, whether or not you ever build.
Worth a 30-minute conversation.