Metering and Billing Systems

Heatlink Client Services Ltd was formed to provide a number of functions, primarily associated with the reading of meters, the creation of tenant bills and collection of payments on group and district heating systems.

It was a natural progression to be able to offer our clients a facility where we can read the meters supplied on our own or other HIU’s, create bills based on recorded consumptions, and collect payments on behalf of our clients.

We have a dedicated system that uses our own Automatic Meter Reading Software which reads each meter on all of our schemes every night around midnight and stores the data. This ensures that we are able to see the individual meter read on any day during that period, which is always useful when we are carrying out a change of tenancy (COT) readings. The system is then asked to look at readings on the particular scheme at the start date and end date of any billing period and provide the consumption for each address. Our ‘Bill Production’ software then applies the appropriate tariffs and creates a bill for each address. Accounts are then emailed and/or posted out.

A dedicated bank account is maintained for each scheme where funds collected are held pending a request for money by the clients to pay the gas bill for the scheme.

Periodic statements are provided to clients and consumers, and we send out ‘reminder’ letters to all consumers that may be ‘late’ with payments.

We liaise with such organisations as Management Companies, Lettings Agents and Housing Associations to monitor all change of tenancies, movement of occupants and outstanding payments.

We provide a number of methods for consumers to pay bills including standing orders, credit or debit card payments, cheques, cash deposit or BACS/internet banking.

Charges for these services are based on the number of dwellings on each scheme the service provides and the frequency of bill production.