How to Automate Conservice

Conservice runs the utility department a property manager does not have

Conservice is a utility management company, which in practice means it is the utility department a property owner would otherwise have to staff. It takes in the water, gas, electric, sewer, waste and telecom invoices for a portfolio, works out what each resident owes, and bills them for it.

It runs across multifamily, commercial, student housing, single-family rentals, manufactured housing, senior living and military housing. The people who deal with it are property managers, regional managers, asset managers and the accounting team behind them.

The reason it exists is arithmetic nobody wants. A large community has invoices arriving from several providers on several cycles, submeters on some units and a ratio calculation on others, residents moving in and out mid-cycle, and vacant units whose consumption belongs to the owner unless somebody notices that it should not. Getting it wrong is not a rounding error. Unrecovered utility cost comes straight off net operating income, and a resident billed incorrectly is a phone call, a credit, and occasionally a regulator.

The recovery report only tells you what already happened

The billing runs. Watching over it is what lands on a person.

Every month somebody signs into the client portal, pulls the recovery report, and holds it against the property's own numbers to see whether the recovery ratio moved and why. Somebody spots a water invoice well above last month's and starts working out whether it is a rate change, a leak or a misread meter. Somebody chases a submeter that stopped reporting three weeks ago, which means every unit behind it has been estimated ever since.

Then the disputes. A resident queries a move-out proration. A provider invoice does not match what was billed on. A regional manager asks why one community recovers far more of its utility spend than the one across town, and answering means opening two portals and two months of statements.

None of it is difficult. All of it is a login, a report and an afternoon, repeated per property, per month, by someone whose actual job is leasing.

Conservice

Variances caught in week one A utility charge that jumps against the same unit's own history flagged the day it posts, when a leak still costs a fraction of what it will.

Silent submeters named Meters that have stopped reporting listed by how long they have been quiet, before estimated reads become the way that unit is billed.

Recovery compared across the portfolio Each property's recovery reduced to one line, so the site that is leaking money is obvious without opening a portal per community.

The billing engine ends at the client portal

What Conservice does on its own is more than most clients use, and it is worth knowing where the line falls.

Expense Management covers invoice processing and error resolution. Expense Recovery bills residents by RUBS, submetering, direct billing or a custom method, with automated move-ins and move-outs and automated final bills. Vacant cost recovery audits the rent roll daily against invoices processed daily, so a vacant-unit charge that turns out to belong to an occupied unit is prorated from the move-in date and applied to that resident's ledger. Data and Analytics consolidates cost and consumption across a portfolio, and a resident portal sits in front of it with eBill and payment options behind.

All of that lands where it should, too. The platform integrates with property management software, so charges reach the ledger rather than a spreadsheet.

The reading is the part that does not travel. A statement that is available is not a statement anyone has read. Nothing carries this month's variance to the regional manager who needs it, holds one property's recovery ratio against another's, or notices on the eleventh that a submeter has been silent since the third. Those answers exist in the portal, which is a different thing from being known.

Meters, vacancies and variances watched between statements

Treat the portal as something that can be opened every morning instead of once a month, and the billing cycle stops setting the pace.

Provider invoices checked against what was billed on, with only the lines that disagree surfaced. A water or electric charge that jumps against the same unit's own history flagged the day it posts, because a leak found in the first week costs a fraction of one found in the sixth. Submeters that have stopped reporting listed by how long they have been quiet, so estimated reads never quietly become normal.

Vacant units whose costs are sitting with the owner named while the lease-up team can still act on them. A move-out proration recalculated and checked before the final bill goes out rather than after the resident calls. Recovery ratios pulled per property into one line each, so the outlier is obvious without a morning of exports.

The boundary matters here because money moves. Reading, comparing and flagging can run unattended overnight. Anything that charges a resident, opens a dispute with a provider or sends a statement is drafted and held for the person who is accountable for it.

The exceptions come to you, not the report

The report is already produced. What is missing is somebody to open it on the morning it matters, and that was never worth a manager's morning.

WebRun is an agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in the way your team signs in. It opens the client portal, reads the statements, the meter data and the recovery reports, holds them against last month and your other properties, and sends you the short version with the exceptions on top.

It runs on your schedule inside your own private environment, and a workflow can be locked to an explicit list of sites. You can watch a run and stop it.

The workflows below are already built, and each one names the portals it opens.