SANTA ANA, Calif., April 22, 2003 -- National Water & Power (NW&P) announced Billing+, a full-service program of utility management services, to assist property owners in better managing utility costs and usage.
The Billing+ program integrates NW&P's Energy Information Services Plus (EIS+) and Electronic Data Exchange Plus (EDE+) offerings with the company's long-standing billing services platform to create a utility management package that streamlines multiple functions into one efficient source of utility information and management.
"Many property owners are dependent upon staff or multiple vendors to manage what can now be combined into a single-source, streamlined process," said Robert Sherman, executive vice president of NW&P. "Billing+ gives property owners a full-service option to coordinate all of their resident utility data through one program, enabling them to pinpoint inefficiencies and improve utility management practices."
With multiple utility vendors, a range of resident activities and differing state and county regulations utility management has become a difficult process to manage at the property level, particularly for property owners with multi-state portfolios. Billing+ gives property owners the option of managing the entire process through a single vendor who has extensive expertise in utility management across the U.S.
The Billing+ package integrates NW&P's utility management expertise in the multifamily industry to provide property owners with the following features and benefits:
* Outsourced Bill Processing- Coordinates implementation, bill processing and payables reporting. Major benefits include on-time payments, avoidance of late charges and duplicate payment of bills, and pursuit of missing bills.
* Data Reporting- Provides utility reporting through web-hosted application to help manage and analyze facility-related utility costs.
* Portfolio Analytical Reports and Benchmarking- Provides reports to clients that allow them to more effectively manage and analyze portfolio-wide utility usage.
* Utility Bill Auditing- Finds and confirms bill errors from utilities and recovers costs.
* Utility Rate and Tariff Analysis- Ensures all facilities and their associated utility accounts are billed correctly and at the least expensive rate.
* Vacant Management and Recovery- Recovers utility costs inappropriately billed to the property owner rather than the resident and provides oversight of wasted utility costs in vacant apartments.
Industry Experts
In building the Billing+ program, NW&P created exclusive partnerships with industry leaders such as Cass Information Systems to deliver the best expertise available to the multifamily industry.
"To provide our customers with the most extensive and comprehensive expertise available in resident care and utility management services, we sought out the industry's best players," said Sherman. "Our partnership with industry leader Cass creates an unparalleled offering in utility management for the multifamily market."
Cass serves as NW&P's client funding and vendor payment operations partner. A publicly traded bank holding company and Federal Reserve member bank, brings unique fiscal responsibility to the market, along with proven scalability, as evidenced by processing a volume topping 100,000 invoices per day with an annual spend of over $10 billion.
About National Water & Power
National Water & Power, a division of NWP Services Corp. headquartered in Santa Ana, Calif., provides a broad range of utility billing, collections and resident care solutions to the multifamily real estate industry. As the largest and fastest growing billing services provider in the country, National Water & Power's billing and submetering operations service properties in 39 states for some of the country's largest real estate investment trusts (REITs), fee managers, real estate partnerships, and individual property owners. Additional information is available at www.nwpco.com.
