What it produces
Every bill downloaded and posted with the right GL coding, each utility account reconciled monthly, resident charges billed by allocation or submeter, and commercial tenants' shares recovered under their leases.
Workflows
Utility Bills & Recoveries
the payment of master-metered utility bills and the allocation of those costs back to residents and commercial tenants
The job in one minute
Who owns it
Accounts payable enters and pays master bills. AR and a staff accountant post resident charges. The property manager watches vacancies and usage spikes. The lease administrator handles commercial recoveries.
How often
Daily posting, monthly reconciliation and billing. The Atlas plans 8 to 35 hours a day for posting alone. Hours are planning estimates.
- 30accounts
- 30portals
- 30logins
- 1routine
Why it hurts
One manager with thirty utility accounts has thirty portals, each with its own login, multi-factor prompt, layout and billing period. Some challenge logins from unfamiliar IP addresses.
A missed bill has a real cost: a late fee on the master account, a vacant unit's electric in the owner's name for weeks, a resident billed for a period nobody posted.
Systems it touches
The agent runs on the manager's machine, in the browser profile already signed in, from the same IP. When a portal asks for a code, it asks a named person and waits. Codes are never stored.
- Utility provider portals
- Yardi Voyager
- RealPage
- MRI
- AppFolio
- Entrata
- Buildium
- Utility billing vendor
- Submeter systems
- Bank portal
- Lease abstract tools
- SMS
- Outlook
- Excel
- SharePoint
12 steps · 6 actions · 4 decisions · 2 human reviews
The workflow, step by step
Action Decision Human review Select a step in the flowchart to jump to it.
Agent
03Read each bill04Map the account to a property and unit or common area05Anomaly rules06Enter the bill with GL coding by charge type and attach the PDF.07Compare service dates with the vacancy list and flag accounts that…08Reconcile each account monthly09Apply the state's allocation or submeter rule for resident billing10Post resident charges12Compute and post each commercial tenant's recovery under its lease
Named person
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Action · Portal
On schedule, open each portal in the signed-in browser and download new bills.
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Human review · Person
When a portal asks for a one-time code, the named person supplies it.
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Action · Agent
Read each bill: account, address, meter, period, usage, charges, due date.
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Decision · Agent
Map the account to a property and unit or common area; unknown accounts go to review.
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Decision · Agent
Anomaly rules: usage spikes, overlapping or missing periods, estimated reads, late fees.
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Action · Agent
Enter the bill with GL coding by charge type and attach the PDF.
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Decision · Agent
Compare service dates with the vacancy list and flag accounts that did not transfer.
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Action · Agent
Reconcile each account monthly: expected, received, paid, outstanding.
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Decision · Agent
Apply the state's allocation or submeter rule for resident billing.
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Action · Agent
Post resident charges, or produce the file for your billing vendor.
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Human review · Accountant
The accountant checks the monthly summary per property.
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Action · Agent
Compute and post each commercial tenant's recovery under its lease.
✓ Done
See it done in the Gallery
Rules vs judgment
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Exact rule
- Common-area deduction and allocation
- Service charge and fee caps
- Vacant-unit billing rules
- Anomaly thresholds and period continuity
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The model reads
- Thirty different bill layouts
- Portal pages that moved the download link
- Estimated-read and adjustment notes
- Scanned paper bills
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A person decides
- One-time codes, every time
- Unknown or untransferred accounts
- Usage spikes that suggest a leak
- Any change to allocation method
When it stops
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Nobody answers the code request
That portal ends with an exception and the others continue.
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A portal redesigns its site
The navigation map is retrained and the workflow stays.
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A bill covers two periods
It is split by rule or reviewed, never posted to one month.
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A vacant unit's account is still in a resident's name, or the reverse
A transfer request is prepared.
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The same bill arrives by portal and by paper
The second copy is attached, not entered.
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The billing vendor's allocation differs from the rules
A difference report goes to the accountant before charges post.
What you end up with
Every bill filed by account and period, every account reconciled, resident charges that follow your state's rules, and a monthly summary showing the deduction, method, fee cap and largest charges per property.
Questions
What about utilities that still mail paper bills?
Scan them into a watched folder. The same reading step handles scans and portal PDFs.
Can this run overnight?
Yes, for portals that stay signed in. For portals that ask for a code every time, schedule the run when the named person is reachable.
Should we keep our utility billing vendor?
Usually yes. The vendor bills residents; the agent downloads, posts, reconciles and checks the vendor's allocation.
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No prompts. No babysitting. No Integrations.