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.
Another factor is the sheer population of the residential area. A city can have literally millions of residents. Any database with that many files is going to need the magnitude of its population to be taken into account. The municipal software should be able to handle an enormous amount of entries, entries which are constantly updated.
A particularly and notoriously tricky issue for municipalities is that of non-payment. There is probably no municipality that has not encountered this issue. The poorer residents in the more indigent suburbs sometimes do not pay due to nothing other than their lack of financial resources. However, there are also those who do not pay for other reasons, whatever those may be. The software should be able to deal with these residents, otherwise it is not adequate for municipal purposes.
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.
The literacy of the population is another factor that municipalities need to keep in mind. The level of literacy is not consistent across the entire population, so the paperwork should be issued in the simplest, most understandable language possible. It is not possible to assume that literacy is paired with area of residence either, since semi-literate or even illiterate people are not automatically residents of indigent suburbs or even financially compromised - they might have proper professional occupations. Literacy and universal comprehensibility are always criteria where documents are distributed to the entire population.
The bill itself should be easy to analyze. It should have an open, simple layout that shows the important amounts and dates, even to a person who is not used to assessing such documents or who has a low level of literacy.
Inaccuracies in statements are embarrassing to the municipality, and non-payment is a serious threat to the budget. Municipal software needs to address both of these issues. At the same time, the municipal administration presents it with thousands of users and millions of entries, so it should be as easy to use as possible.
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.
Another factor is the sheer population of the residential area. A city can have literally millions of residents. Any database with that many files is going to need the magnitude of its population to be taken into account. The municipal software should be able to handle an enormous amount of entries, entries which are constantly updated.
A particularly and notoriously tricky issue for municipalities is that of non-payment. There is probably no municipality that has not encountered this issue. The poorer residents in the more indigent suburbs sometimes do not pay due to nothing other than their lack of financial resources. However, there are also those who do not pay for other reasons, whatever those may be. The software should be able to deal with these residents, otherwise it is not adequate for municipal purposes.
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.
The literacy of the population is another factor that municipalities need to keep in mind. The level of literacy is not consistent across the entire population, so the paperwork should be issued in the simplest, most understandable language possible. It is not possible to assume that literacy is paired with area of residence either, since semi-literate or even illiterate people are not automatically residents of indigent suburbs or even financially compromised - they might have proper professional occupations. Literacy and universal comprehensibility are always criteria where documents are distributed to the entire population.
The bill itself should be easy to analyze. It should have an open, simple layout that shows the important amounts and dates, even to a person who is not used to assessing such documents or who has a low level of literacy.
Inaccuracies in statements are embarrassing to the municipality, and non-payment is a serious threat to the budget. Municipal software needs to address both of these issues. At the same time, the municipal administration presents it with thousands of users and millions of entries, so it should be as easy to use as possible.
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You can find an overview of the benefits of utility bill software and more info about a great software program at http://www.quikwaters.com right now.
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