solutions

Water Systems

Capita IB Solutions Water Systems have been developed for organisations responsible for collecting and recording Water Meter Readings, and wishing to provide intelligent data reporting and automated billing.

Charges are levied from water consumed and discharged in the premises. These charges are based on consumption where a meter has been installed. It is the responsibility of the Water Authority or Water Company to identify consumers to be charged, calculate amounts due and request payment.

Metered accounts are generally charged by user-defined billing periods. There may often be a minimum charge imposed on metered accounts as well as annual charges such as the rental of the meter itself. For premises where water is used jointly, for domestic and commercial purposes, an allowance can be provided.

Mobile Recording

Some authorities in Ireland are taking full ownership of recording the physical water meter readings for billing purposes or in the UK, the water companies themselves are responsible for the readings.

Capita IB Solutions has greatly reduced the enormity of this task by providing a mobile software add-on solution to the Water System. This enables field staff to electronically identify a water meter by scanning a bar code placed on the meter.

This automatically identifies the account to which the meter belongs and the operator simply needs to type in the current meter reading. This solution minimises data entry and reduces the risk of incorrect identification or association of water meters and accounts.

Third Party Contractor

In some cases, the authority is choosing to contract out this task of recording meter readings to a third party. In such cases, the Water System will accept information through an external interface from a third party system. This may be through XML, comma-delimited files (.CSV) or ASCII text. At a minimum the information provided from the third-party must include key data to allow the water system to uniquely identify the water meter and what account or customer it belongs to. The information provided will include the following types of records: