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New Software Will Affect Customers Of Towanda, Wysox Municipal Authorities Option To Pay Bills Online Will Become Available [Daily Review, The (PA)]
[September 19, 2014]

New Software Will Affect Customers Of Towanda, Wysox Municipal Authorities Option To Pay Bills Online Will Become Available [Daily Review, The (PA)]


(Daily Review, The (PA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) TOWANDA - The Towanda and Wysox Township municipal authorities are getting ready to start using new billing software, which will allow for online payment of bills, make the billing process more automated, and result in some other changes for customers.



The software, which will be in use starting the first week of November, will allow the Towanda Municipal Authority (TMA) to bill its 2,500 customers for current usage, rather than billing for a period that ended more than a month before the bill was issued, said Towanda Municipal Authority clerk April Maynard, who handles the billing for the Wysox Township Municipal Authority.

For example, the TMA bills that were mailed out earlier this month and are due Sept. 22 were based on a meter reading that was done in July, she said.


By contrast, the first TMA bills issued using the new software will be mailed out during the first week of November and will be based on a reading done in October, Maynard said.

The TMA's practice of billing for usage that is so far in the past has been "confusing," said Kyle V. Lane, manager of the Towanda Municipal Authority, which owns and operates the Towanda Water & Sewer System. "It's just how it was done." In order for the TMA's billing to be converted to a system that is based on current usage, the bill mailed out in the first week of November will need to cover a two-month period that begins in August and ends in October, instead of the normal one-month billing period, Maynard said.

"All TMA customers will get a bill for two months" in the first week of November, Lane said.

TMA bills issued in December and in subsequent months will again be for a one-month period, Maynard said.

Because customers may have difficulty paying the two-month bill that is issued in early November, the TMA will "waive any late fees" for a late payment of the bill, Lane said.

"We are willing to work" with customers who will have difficulty in paying the November bill on time, Lane said.

The customers of the TMA and Wysox Municipal Authority will have the option of paying their bills online, and that option will become available probably in early 2015, Lane said.

Currently, customers come to the Towanda and Wysox municipal authorities' office at 724 Main St., Towanda "non-stop" to pay their bills because the only other options are to mail in their bills or to arrange for the bill payments to be automatically withdrawn from a bank account, Lane said.

Online payment of bills should help to reduce the number of people paying in person, which will allow the clerical staff in the office to concentrate more on collecting delinquent bills and posting shut-off notices "and that kind of thing," Lane said.

At this time, the TMA and the Wysox Township Municipal Authority have no plans to charge customers a fee for paying their bills online, Lane said.

Due dates When the new billing system goes into use, the due dates for bills will change, Maynard said.

Currently the bills, which clerks try to send out during the first week of the month, are due on the 24th day of the month for Wysox Township customers and on the 22nd for TMA customers, Maynard said.

Under the new system, bills will be due later, at the end of the month, Maynard said.

Another change that will result from the new software is that readings for TMA customers will be done on a more consistent schedule, closer to every 30 days, Maynard said. By contrast, until now, a customer might have had a reading done in one instance after 21 days, and another time, it might have been done after 35 days, Maynard said.

Still another change that will occur as a result of the upgrade in billing software is that all TMA customers will receive a monthly bill, even if there had not been a meter reading done for that month, Lane said.

Maynard explained that sometimes a monthly reading cannot be done because, for example, an aggressive dog prevented the meter reader from doing the reading or because weather conditions prevented the reading. Until now, if no monthly reading was done, more often than not no bill was issued, and the customer was billed for that month's service when a subsequent bill was sent out, Maynard said.

Under the new billing system, if no monthly reading is done, the customer will still be issued a bill for the month, based on estimated usage, Lane said. The customer's subsequent bill will then be adjusted up or down to account for the difference between actual usage and the estimated usage, he said.

"The key is that everyone will get a bill, whether it is based on actual usage or an estimate," said Fred Johnson, operating superintendent of the Towanda Municipal Authority.

If the bill is based on estimated usage, the amount the customer will owe for his or her estimated usage will be known as the "consumption charge," Maynard said.

The appearance of the bills themselves will also change, she said.

A letter explaining the changes will be mailed to the customers of the Towanda and Wysox municipal authorities, according to the TMA.

The Towanda Municipal Authority does the billing for the Wysox Township Municipal Authority.

James Loewenstein can be reached at (570) 265-1633; or email: [email protected].

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