Are google sheets the old-fashioned way?
The world is becoming more and more connected, and if it’s not already, it’s on its way there. Today, even your coffee machine can be connected to the Internet and used to make coffee via Bluetooth. The digitalization of utility management does not seem to be a priority. Although Google Sheets are great for team collaboration, they can become messy when trying to scale.
Every time one thinks about tracking utilities & utility bills, more often than not, we think – google sheets or excel sheets.
In today’s digital age, there are tools available to track them more efficiently. Then, using google & excel sheets – is it really the right approach? The questions that should arise are
– Is it efficient?
– Is it scalable?
– Can things slip through the cracks?
Based on the interactions we’ve had with our clients & working with them very closely, we believe these are the most burning questions that need to be addressed.
Let’s talk about efficiency. For a lot of companies we have worked with, the idea of not maintaining physical books for tracking the utilities is synonymous with managing it digitally & efficiently. That’s the mindset that we are working on changing.
Imagine maintaining a portfolio of 200 properties and you need to maintain rows of data in google sheets. This would include –
– When were the utilities connected?
– When are the bills due for payment?
– Have the payments been done?
– Where are the bill payment receipts saved?
Now if these questions are already making you dizzy, imagine what you will go through when managing a portfolio of 1000 properties a month? The point here is – the solution is not scalable.
Have you ever faced a situation where someone from your operations team is trying to find out why a utility is disconnected at home? Turns out this one slipped through the cracks & the payment was missed. Due to the past due balance, the service was disconnected.
Consider another situation, you call the service provider to set up services for a property. After spending almost 45 minutes on hold, you are told the service set-up cannot be completed as there are past due balances that need to be paid.
These are situations that our clients have encountered. These are situations that we have encountered when we assisted our clients in connecting utility services.
And this is where we believe our Utility Management Platform is the answer. A solution to these real-life operational challenges.
As a starting point, depending on how large your portfolio of properties is, we work with you to onboard you. Once your portfolio is online, connecting utilities is as simple as clicking a button. Submit the request to connect the utilities from within the dashboard & our team does the rest.
One may counter here stating this will need manual effort. Point taken. Having said that, for any platform or system to give your desired output, you have to feed it some data. Plus, you always have us to assist you with the onboarding.
Another question that may come up is – I will still need to track the status manually. No, you will not need to do that. When we say google sheets is the old-fashioned way, we mean it. You can track the progress of your request using the dashboard reports.
Once the utilities are connected, the utility bills will start coming in. Just add them to the dashboard & let it track it for you. No more maintaining sheets with complex formulae to keep track of –
– Is the bill paid?
– When will the next bill come in?
Based on the data you add to the dashboard, it does the following –
– If the bill added has not been marked as paid, it reminds you to ensure you make the payment & avoid late fees.
– If you have made the bill payment & not marked the bill as paid, don’t expect the dashboard to go easy on you. Until you mark the bill as paid, it will keep reminding you.
– If you don’t add the next bill to the dashboard, based on the previous bill period, it will send you a reminder to add your bill.
Now compare this to a situation where all of this is done manually using complicated google sheets or excel sheets. We don’t know about you. It sounds like a nightmare to us.
When it comes to actually tracking utility expenses and usage, everyone finds reasons to avoid it. Why are we so confident of it? We’ve made that mistake & have seen our clients making that mistake. One can say what is the worst that can happen? Let’s discuss that –
– Your utility bill amount is increasing with no significant increase in usage. The fact you are not tracking them, it will go unnoticed and you will pay the bill.
– You have sold the property & assume the utilities are no further in your name. However, you continue to make the bill payments as you’re not tracking them. And when you realize this, you’ve already covered the utility expenses for the new property owner or tenant for one to 18 months. We can say this as we’ve been burnt & paid for it as well… It still gives us the jitters.
With the dashboard doing the heavy lifting of tracking all this for you, you only need to keep an eye on the trends it shows for each of your properties. See something fishy? Well, in that case, we will say, the dashboard did its job. As the platform matures, we envision for it to alert you when it spots something fishy. We feel that would be super awesome!!
A lot of the clients we’ve worked with say when it comes to disconnecting utilities, it is not a big issue as the new owners or tenants will take care of it. At the cost of sounding a bit rude, that is being naive.
While we are trying not to generalize, in our experience not everyone follows due process. Not everyone gets utilities moved to their name when they take ownership of the property. One of our clients faced this when they realized they were paying for the gas bill for a property for 23 months. They realized this 23 months later that the new owners did not keep their end of the bargain. That’s when they decided it was time for the experts to step in & take over.
Once you have confirmation that the property is sold, submit a disconnect request on the platform. Our team will reach out to the service providers and ensure that the services are no longer in your name & you will foot the bills for someone else. Ever. We mentioned that you can track the status of your connect utility requests on the dashboard reports. You can do the same for disconnection requests.
To wrap, we can confidently say this – Utility Junction’s platform is the only solution you’ll ever need to manage your utility needs end to end.
So, let’s connect for a discovery call & we can discuss the challenges you are facing in your operations. Know exactly what you need, contact us here or send us an email at support@utilityjunction.com