MaxBill represent ultimate automated billing systems for the energy and utility service providers. It covers the entire concept-to-cash lifecycle, enabling utilities worldwide to automate revenue management, invoicing, and reconciliation.
This is Part II of our series of the most popular questions about automated billing systems for the energy and utility industry. MaxBill product owners and project managers answer them based on MaxBill’s 30-year experience in the domain and expertise they have from current market best practices.
In this part, you will find out about meter reading management, tariff management, contract management, customer care and order management.
Let’s get closer to the answers.
Order management
How different customer models are built and used in automated billing system for the utility industry?
In utility automated billing systems, customer models are built as structured profiles that define how different customer groups are processed during ordering, provisioning, and billing. The ultimate goal is to generate accurate invoices and collect revenue.
At a high level, customers are categorized by business role and sector (such as private/domestic, commercial & industrial, government, or partners), and by billing behavior.
Core billing models typically include postpaid customers, prepaid customers, hybrid customers combining prepaid and postpaid services, and partners who receive commissions.
Each model comes with its own data structure, services, and financial logic. For example, large industrial clients, municipalities, or tenant billing scenarios follow different contract and charging rules than residential users. These customer models allow automated billing systems to apply the right workflows, pricing, invoicing, and settlements automatically based on customer type.
What possible customer hierarchies do automated billing systems for energy and utility support?
Advanced billing software for the energy and utilities industry supports flexible customer hierarchies by configuring relationships between the service user and the service payer. These two don’t have to be the same entity.
This allows providers to model scenarios, such as one customer paying fully or partially for another customer’s services, covering specific services or entire packages, handling corporate hierarchies, commissions, or employee benefits.
For example, a company can assign credit limits or free subscriptions to its employees or apply internal discounts (such as staff receiving reduced gas tariffs). These payer–user configurations are treated as part of the customer model, enabling billing systems to support real-world structures like enterprises, municipalities, multi-site businesses, and partner ecosystems within a single platform.
What frequent reports are expected from the automated billing systems for energy and utility?
Traditionally, energy suppliers and utility companies expect their billing systems to produce a core set of recurring operational, analytical, and billing compliance reports. Before implementation, compliance and operations teams usually define a reporting catalogue that specifies each report’s purpose, format, and frequency.
Common reports include consumption data reports, revenue reports, aged debt, and customer balance reports. Today, many organizations prefer on-demand data exports instead of fixed reports. The billing system prepares clean, structured data that flows into the customer’s own analytics tools (such as PowerBI), where teams build and customize their reports independently.
Tariff management
Do automated billing systems for energy and utilities allow tariff flexibility?
Yes, automated billing for energy and utilities are built to support highly flexible tariff structures. In practice, this means suppliers can configure flat subscriptions, hourly or half-hourly rates, time-of-day pricing, tiered thresholds, bundled tariffs (for example energy + EV charging or solar), and even dynamic models within the same system.
Platforms like MaxBill apply these tariffs automatically to incoming consumption data. This allows providers to adapt pricing quickly to market conditions, customer segments, and regulatory requirements.
Supported material:
Half-Hourly Settlement: is your utility business ‘reform-able’?
Everything about EV charging prices across Europe
Does automated billing software support spot prices for energy markets in specific countries?
Yes, billing systems are built to ingest spot prices per country and turn them into customer-ready, usage-based bills.
In practice, billing platforms pull hourly wholesale prices from exchanges like EPEX SPOT, Nord Pool, OMIE, or GME via APIs or market messaging systems, then automatically apply those prices to customer consumption.
This enables dynamic retail tariffs where end users are billed based on real-time or hourly market rates. Markups, caps, or discounts are layered on top according to the supplier’s commercial rules.
Does the automated billing system support tariff upgrades automatically?
Yes, billing systems as MaxBill support automatic tariff upgrades. When a tariff is updated in the product catalog, the new version is automatically applied to all customers linked to that tariff. No manual reassignment is needed.
Can modern automatic billing systems support dynamic tariffs, specifically, tariffs linked to fluctuating fuel prices?
Yes, billing systems do support dynamic tariffs, including tariffs linked to fluctuating fuel or market prices.
In systems like MaxBill, pricing can be configured to change automatically based on multiple variables: time of day, geographic zone or region, consumption tiers (for example one price below 1000 kWh and another above), and externally driven price updates.
Any price change, whether fuel-indexed, zone-based, or volume-based, is managed centrally in the tariff catalog and applied automatically during billing. So, customer charges always reflect the latest configured rules without manual recalculation.
Can an automatic billing system handle mid-period tariff changes automatically? E.g., if rates change during a billing cycle (e.g., October to November) will it split billing accordingly?
Yes, billing systems like MaxBill handle mid-period tariff changes automatically using proration. If a rate changes during a billing cycle (for example, from October to November), the system splits consumption into two parts: before and after the price change.
Then it applies the correct tariff to each period. Both segments are then shown clearly on the invoice as a billing split, so customers see exactly how usage was calculated across the different prices.
Can we apply tariff changes in one place and have them cascade to all affected customers? Or, do we need to update customers individually?
Yes, in MaxBill, tariff changes are managed centrally. You update the tariff once in the product catalog, and it automatically cascades to all customers linked to that tariff. There’s no need to update each customer individually. This lets suppliers roll out pricing changes quickly and consistently across their entire customer base.
Can the automated billing system track and audit who changes tariff rates? Does it log the user who made changes for governance/compliance?
Yes, MaxBill keeps a full audit trail for tariff changes. Every modification is logged by the system, including what was changed, when it was changed, and which authenticated user made the change. Because each user operates under their own login, this creates a clear governance and compliance record for pricing updates.
Can standing charges be applied monthly or quarterly?
Yes, in MaxBill, standing charges are fully configurable. They can be applied daily, monthly, quarterly, for any custom billing period, or even non-standard cycles. It’s simply a setting of the standing charge service itself, so suppliers can match whatever billing cadence their contracts require.
Meter reads management
How do automated billing systems for energy and utilities receive consumption readings?
Automatic billing systems receive consumption readings through integrations with national market messaging platforms and data hubs, which differ by country and act as central aggregators for utility data. These systems exchange customer activations, customer updates, and meter readings, allowing billing platforms to ingest validated consumption data automatically.
In addition, automated billing systems can collect readings from external portals that provide hourly uploads and downloads of meter data either through direct integrations or by importing files into the billing platform.
Supported material:
Half hourly meter readings and CR055 by Ofgem: Full guide to avoid non-compliance risks
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How many reading file formats does an automated billing system for utility suppliers support?
Billing systems for utility suppliers support multiple reading file formats, including XML, Excel, CSV, DBF, and TXT for manual imports, alongside API-based integrations for automated data exchange.
Does the automated billing system for energy and utility automatically estimate consumption when actual reads are missing? Based on historical data?
Yes, MaxBill automatically estimates consumption when actual meter reads are missing, using configurable algorithms. It supports three main approaches:
Historical usage: estimates are calculated from the customer’s previous consumption patterns.
Customer group averages: if there’s no history (for example, a new customer), the system uses predefined benchmarks by segment (e.g., typical water usage for a 1-room vs 3-room apartment or by tariff group).
Weather-based (thermal curves):especially for heating, estimates factor in daily temperature data and seasonality, applying formulas that adjust consumption based on weather conditions.
Can estimates be generated automatically without manual intervention?
In MaxBill, consumption estimates are generated automatically. There’s no manual trigger from users. When actual readings are missing, the system applies its configured estimation logic on its own and proceeds with billing accordingly.
Can the energy and utility automatic billing system work with both old manual meters and future smart meters?
Yes, energy and utility billing platforms like MaxBill are built to work with both legacy manual meters and next-generation smart meters. They ingest manual readings, interval data (hourly / half-hourly), and smart-meter streams through files or APIs. Suppliers can run mixed estates today and transition to smart metering over time without changing their billing core.
Supported material:
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Smart meter in Europe 2024-2030: transforming utilities & empowering consumers
Can meter read data be imported via file or API?
Yes, MaxBill supports importing meter read data both via files and APIs. Suppliers can configure scheduled imports (for example daily or monthly) or pull readings automatically from external systems. Consumption data flows into billing on a regular cadence without manual effort.
Contract management
What kind of contract models does energy and utility automated billing system support?
Modern energy and utility billing systems like MaxBill support multiple contract models across both B2C and B2B:
- Fixed-price contracts: these are locked rates for periods ranging from 1 month up to 5 years.
- Dynamic pricing contracts linked to spot or intraday market prices.
- Hybrid (Click / OTC) contracts combining hedged volumes with dynamic market pricing for the remainder.
- Imbalance-based contracts and PPAs, supporting settlement against imbalance costs and long-term Power Purchase Agreements.
Supported material:
How MaxBill dynamic energy contract management helps energy companies cut costs and boost margins
