One of the primary activities that municipalities are involved in is the charging and receiving of municipal rates and tariffs. It is unusual for a property in a town or city to be free of such charges. The local authority then needs to send bills to residents every month and also take the monies paid to them. Their utility bill software therefore needs to be able to handle these tasks.
There are some indispensable characteristics that the software should have in order to be effective in the municipality's administration. Even the first stage of the billing process, which is the issuing of the actual paper bills, presents some simple requirements to the administration and, in turn, to the software that they use. One of these is accuracy. The standard off-hand wise-crack about the municipal account that shows a million-dollar water bill is not as humorous as it may sound.
Also, towns and cities are home to large populations, sometimes numbering several millions of people. This makes the municipal database of residents extremely large, so the software that is used should be able to accommodate a database of this size. These records are also being updated on a monthly basis, or at least continuously.
Another criterion is that the software should be able to detect and alert its users to non-payment. Non-payment is a perennial issue for municipalities. Indigent residents sometimes do not pay their accounts on time, or at all, and this is typically observed in the impoverished areas of the town or city. Then there are those residents who simply won't pay, for various reasons. Software that cannot pick up non-payment is useless.
The issue of the physical statements that are sent to the residents also arises. These should be acceptable to the residents. To start with, the bills need to reflect the linguistic make-up of the town or city. In some towns and cities, there is more than one language in use. The software should therefore be able to handle bilingualism, or even multilingualism, because the bills might be printed in more than one language, or they might be issued in different languages, depending on who they are being sent to.
Not everyone has the same level of literacy or education. Some people might be only partially literate, even though they are professional people or artisans. The fact that they are illiterate does not necessarily mean that they are impoverished or that they reside in the poorer areas of the town or city, or that they lack financial resources. In such cases, the bill should be easy to understand. Issuing paperwork to the entire population always involves this requirement and the software should be able to accommodate it.
The actual physical statement has its own requirements. A person who seldom reads such documents, or who is not literate, should be able to identify the important figures on it, and also the dates. This implies that it should be easy to assess, with a simplified layout.
Municipalities need a reliable and accurate software system for their billing administration. Non-payment is a thorny issue that causes severe emotional responses, at times, and the issuing of inaccurate bills is another. The software that the municipality uses to issue the bills should be easy to use for a system that has as many as millions of entries and thousands of users.
There are some indispensable characteristics that the software should have in order to be effective in the municipality's administration. Even the first stage of the billing process, which is the issuing of the actual paper bills, presents some simple requirements to the administration and, in turn, to the software that they use. One of these is accuracy. The standard off-hand wise-crack about the municipal account that shows a million-dollar water bill is not as humorous as it may sound.
Also, towns and cities are home to large populations, sometimes numbering several millions of people. This makes the municipal database of residents extremely large, so the software that is used should be able to accommodate a database of this size. These records are also being updated on a monthly basis, or at least continuously.
Another criterion is that the software should be able to detect and alert its users to non-payment. Non-payment is a perennial issue for municipalities. Indigent residents sometimes do not pay their accounts on time, or at all, and this is typically observed in the impoverished areas of the town or city. Then there are those residents who simply won't pay, for various reasons. Software that cannot pick up non-payment is useless.
The issue of the physical statements that are sent to the residents also arises. These should be acceptable to the residents. To start with, the bills need to reflect the linguistic make-up of the town or city. In some towns and cities, there is more than one language in use. The software should therefore be able to handle bilingualism, or even multilingualism, because the bills might be printed in more than one language, or they might be issued in different languages, depending on who they are being sent to.
Not everyone has the same level of literacy or education. Some people might be only partially literate, even though they are professional people or artisans. The fact that they are illiterate does not necessarily mean that they are impoverished or that they reside in the poorer areas of the town or city, or that they lack financial resources. In such cases, the bill should be easy to understand. Issuing paperwork to the entire population always involves this requirement and the software should be able to accommodate it.
The actual physical statement has its own requirements. A person who seldom reads such documents, or who is not literate, should be able to identify the important figures on it, and also the dates. This implies that it should be easy to assess, with a simplified layout.
Municipalities need a reliable and accurate software system for their billing administration. Non-payment is a thorny issue that causes severe emotional responses, at times, and the issuing of inaccurate bills is another. The software that the municipality uses to issue the bills should be easy to use for a system that has as many as millions of entries and thousands of users.
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