Scaling Property Management: Processing 10,000+ Utility Bills Per Month
How can smart automation help large property management companies process thousands of utility bills per month? We elaborate on this below.
Manual Data Entry Challenges
A property management company with 1,000 properties may have to process about 50,000 utility bills every year (assuming 1 bill per month for each major utility: electricity, water, trash, and so on). Each bill needs someone to:
- Extract amounts, service dates, usage data, etc.
- Match the bill to the correct property and units
- Export data to property management systems
What's also done often, depending on local regulations:
- Calculate tenant utility cost allocations. Often based on things like square footage of units, a flat rate, or custom formulas.
- Generate tenant invoices
- Track payments and send reminders
Assuming it takes about 15 minutes per bill, that's 12,500 hours of manual work per year. At $15/hour that'd be $187,500 in labor costs yearly just for manual data entry.
Using smart automation to handle 10,000+ utility bills per month
BillGauge's automation pipeline can take the utility bill processing time down from weeks to days, or even hours. It enables large property management companies to efficiently process tens of thousands of utility bills each month. It does so with smart automation - from automated data extraction and bill-property matching to anomaly detection. These same automation principles that work at enterprise scale also benefit smaller organizations, as detailed in our guide for HOAs looking to streamline their utility bill processing.
1. Bulk Utility Bill Ingestion
The first step is to put all of the utility bills in BillGauge's pipeline. This can be done by uploading all bills. This can be done through a simple drag-and-drop interface. BillGauge can handle 10000+ bills with one upload, for instance if they're all packed in a single zip file.
Automated email forwarding from utility providers is also possible, so users won't even have to download and collect the bills.
Finally, direct API integration is possible. One's system can programatically feed bills into BillGauge.
BillGauge handles mixed formats including PDFs, high-resolution images, as well as poor-quality fax scans.
- • 10,000+ bills per batch upload possible
- • Supports PDF, JPG, PNG, TIFF, and low-quality scans
- • Automated email forwarding possible from unlimited utility accounts, as well as API / custom integration
Upload History & Audit Trail Management
BillGauge's upload history interface with audit trail / human verification tracking. Each bill gets timestamped and logged for compliance purposes.
2. Automated Data Extraction
BillGauge will automatically extract all data from every utility bill (whether it's a PDF, image, or any other format).
It will extract not just utility type, total amount, service dates and so on, but also detailed usage data. This will allow for more advanced utility usage analytics (e.g. energy efficiency metrics per property) down the road.
Processing takes a few seconds up to about 15 minutes for 10,000+ bills.
Our experience is that extracted data is correct in 99,99% of all cases - the 0.01% being data from bills that are badly handwritten or crumbled and manually scanned.
Once done, BillGauge provides a built-in human verification editor. It allows staff to quickly review each bill side-by-side with the extracted data, and tag every bill as 'Human Verified'
A user can quickly see the core data and original bill at a glance, verify it's correct, and press 'Human Verified, Next Bill', taking just a few seconds per bill.
See it in action:
No payment details required • Process utility bills within minutes
Automated Data Extraction & Verification Interface
BillGauge's side-by-side verification showing original bill vs extracted data. Flags potential issues for human review.
3. Automated Matching Utility Bills To The Right Property
Bulk Property & Tenant Management System
CSV bulk import for properties, units, and tenants. Supports complex allocation rules and property hierarchies.
BillGauge's matching algorithms automatically links every utility bill to its corresponding property. This is done based on the utility bills' service address (and account number).
If no property is found, bills are automatically flagged for human review.
BillGauge has a step-by-step bulk importer to easily ingest all properties in one's portfolio. This includes units, tenants and utility cost allocation rules. Data can be pasted directly from CSV / Excel and irregularities (for instance, duplicate property entries) are automatically flagged.
Properties and all of their data can also be programatically inserted with BillGauge's API.
4. Automated Tenant Invoices and Payments
BillGauge automatically generates professional tenant invoices based on the utility bills for a month and the split rules set to allocate costs from utilities. These can be downloaded or sent out in bulk with one click.
Optionally, BillGauge integrates directly with Stripe to accept payments. It auto-generates payment links through which property managers can be paid directly. These can also be sent out in bulk (thousands at a time) with one click
- • 10,000+ tenant invoices downloadable, and sent out, with one click
- • 10,000+ payment links sent out with one click
- • Direct secure payment integration with Stripe
Financial Operations & Payment Tracking Dashboard
BillGauge's financial dashboard showing invoice status, payment tracking, and collections across thousands of units.
5. Property Management Systems Integrations
Enterprise Integration & Export Platform
Export interface for pushing data to AppFolio, Buildium, Yardi, and other property management systems.
BillGauge integrates with existing property management systems such as AppFolio, Buildium, Yardi, and other major PMS. All data, whether it's from utility bills or tenant invoices, can be directly exported to these platforms. Export to CSV / Excel is also possible, as well as exports in custom formats.
BillGauge can also setup a custom pipeline or API integration with other existing property managements systems, as well as with custom in-house (enterprise) systems.
6. Advanced Utility Management Features
Having utility bills automatically processed at scale also provides other benefits, some of which are below:
Automated Bill Anomaly Detection
BillGauge automatically flags unusual bills that have missing core data (e.g. missing start of the billing period concerned) or have irregularities or plain errors. Examples are:
- Bills with individual utility costs higher than the total amount
- Unexpected usage spikes that could indicate leaks or meter issues
- Billing errors or incorrect charges from utility providers
Advanced Utility Analytics
Once bills are processed, portfolio-wide insights are immediately available. These may help, for instance, in optimizing energy efficiency across properties and and identifying methods to save costs:
- Energy efficiency metrics per property and per square foot
- Seasonal usage patterns and trend analysis
- Comparative analysis across similar properties
Audit-Proof Record Keeping
Having the utility bills go through BillGauge's pipelines provides a complete audit trail with timestamped records of all bills processed:
- Human verification tracking and reviewer identification
- Complete modification history for every bill and allocation
- Easily searchable records for compliance and auditing purposes
Bill Anomaly Detection Dashboard
BillGauge's anomaly detection dashboard automatically flags bills with unusual patterns, helping property managers catch issues early and avoid costly surprises.
What Smart Automation May Save In Costs
Per utility bill processing time
Labor cost savings (1000 properties)
Accuracy rate of automation, 0.01% corrected with efficient human-verification editor
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