Designing Service Cycles, Routes, And Schedules
Designing Service Cycles for Meter Reading
The criterion that affects the number of service cycles has nothing to do with when meter readers physically read your meters. Rather, the frequency that you bill the meter's consumption (real or estimated) is what controls the number of service cycles.
So, for example, if you bill every month, but read every OTHER month, you'll have 20 service cycles - one for each bill day during the month. If you bill bimonthly, you'll have 40 service cycles. If you bill quarterly, you'll have 60 service cycles. Etc.
Different billing frequencies are possible for different service points. If you have different billing frequencies for your different types of metered service, you'll need a different set of cycles for each billing frequency. For example, if you bill water quarterly and electricity monthly, you'll have 20 bill cycles (one for each bill day during a month), but you'd need 60 quarterly service cycles for your water service points, and 20 monthly service cycles for your electric service points. This would result in a customer getting billed every month. However, four times a year, their bill would contain a charge for both electricity and water.
Designing Service Routes For Meter Reading
The following points describe the relationship between a meter read, a route and a service cycle:
- A service cycle contains one or more routes.
- A route has one or more service points.
- A service point holds a meter.
- And a meter is what is read.
- Therefore, the number of meters a person can read in a day limits the number of service points in a route.
If your company supplies electric service and uses MV90's, you will need to take advantage of "notional" routes. A "notional" route's service points are never actually read by a human. Rather, the service points' consumption is fed to the system by a sophisticated device (e.g., an MV90). These service points still need to be linked to a route because billing is dependent on the route's cycle to determine the expected meter read date.
Designing Metered Service Cycle Schedules
The process of designing your service schedules is either easy or complicated. It will be easy if all routes within a cycle are downloaded when the service cycle is scheduled for download. It will be complicated if you download a subset of routes within a cycle on any given download date. We'll provide a few examples to help explain why.
If you download all cycles in a route whenever the cycle is downloaded, your service cycle schedule will look as follows.
Bill cycles. We've included each service cycle's related bill cycle to help you understand when the service cycle's consumption will be billed. Bill cycles are discussed in Bill Cycles.
|
Service Cycle |
Download Date |
Sched MR Date |
Which Routes To Download |
Bill Cycle |
Bill Window |
Estimation Date |
|
|
1 |
28-May-99 |
31-May-99 |
All |
1 |
31-May-99 to 2-Jun-99 |
2-Jun-99 |
|
|
2 |
31-May-99 |
1-Jun-99 |
All |
2 |
1-Jun-99 to 3-Jun-99 |
3-Jun-99 |
|
|
3 |
1-Jun-99 |
2-Jun-99 |
All |
3 |
2-Jun-99 to 4-Jun-99 |
4-Jun-99 |
|
|
4 |
2-Jun-99 |
3-Jun-99 |
All |
4 |
3-Jun-99 to 7-Jun-99 |
7-Jun-99 |
|
|
Etc. to 20 |
Now let's complicate life. If we assume you physically read your routes every other month (but bill monthly using estimated consumption), then you'll need the following service schedule.
|
Service Cycle |
Download Date |
Sched MR Date |
Which Routes |
Bill Cycle |
Bill Window |
Estimation Date |
|
|
1 |
30-May-99 |
31-May-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Download 4, 5, 6 - Estimate |
1 |
31-May-99 to 2-Jun-99 |
2-Jun-99 |
|
|
2 |
31-May-99 |
1-Jun-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Download 4, 5, 6 - Estimate |
2 |
1-Jun-99 to 3-Jun-99 |
3-Jun-99 |
|
|
3 |
1-Jun-99 |
2-Jun-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Download 4, 5, 6 - Estimate |
3 |
2-Jun-99 to 4-Jun-99 |
4-Jun-99 |
|
|
4 |
2-Jun-99 |
3-Jun-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Download 4, 5, 6 - Estimate |
4 |
3-Jun-99 to 7-Jun-99 |
7-Jun-99 |
|
|
Etc. to 20 |
|||||||
|
1 |
29-Jun-99 |
30-Jun-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Estimate 4, 5, 6 - Download |
1 |
30-Jun-99 to 2-Jul-99 |
2-July-99 |
|
|
2 |
30-Jun-99 |
1-July-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Estimate 4, 5, 6 - Download |
2 |
1-July-99 to 3-Jul-99 |
3-July-99 |
|
|
3 |
1-July-99 |
2-July-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Estimate 4, 5, 6 - Download |
3 |
2-July-99 to 4-July-99 |
4-July-99 |
|
|
4 |
2-July-99 |
3-July-99 |
1, 2, 3 - Estimate 4, 5, 6 - Download |
4 |
3-July-99 to 7-July-99 |
7-July-99 |
|
|
Etc. to 20 |
Notice the following:
- You still have 20 service cycles even though you only read the meters every other month. Why? Because billing uses the scheduled read date on the service cycle to know when to look for a reading. If it can't find a reading on this date, billing estimates consumption (given estimation is allowed on the service agreement). Without a service cycle schedule, billing wouldn't know when to look for readings.
- Every other month you download half the routes in each cycle and estimate consumption for the other half.
- If you don't download all routes when a service cycle is scheduled, you have to indicate how to handle every route in the cycle.
The above design is infinitely flexible. You can use it to handle any number of requirements:
- Estimate consumption every seventh month.
- Bill every month, but only read once a quarter.
- Etc.