Bill Guide

The Bill Guide is a summary of billing insights that helps customers better understand their most recent billed usage charges. It includes a bill breakdown, weather insight, and neighbor comparison insight.

Utility Requirements

Same as listed in the product-wide requirements. Additionally, utilities that plan to use Bill Guide for embedded implementations (as opposed to standalone implementations) must be on the latest technical framework available from Oracle Utilities Opower. See Bill Guide in the Oracle Utilities Opower Embeddable Widgets Integration Guide for embedding guidance.

Customer Requirements

Billing data is required for most Bill Guide features. Other data requirements apply depending on the feature and whether the new or legacy data transfer specification is used. See the links to individual feature descriptions under User Experience below for more information.

Limitations

  • US English Only: The Bill Guide is currently available in US English only.
  • Non-Supported Billing Frequencies: The Bill Guide only supports customers on monthly bills. Bimonthly and quarterly bills are not currently supported.
  • Non-Supported Customer Types: Small and Medium Business (SMB) customers, Commercial and Industrial (C&I) customers, and water and wastewater customers are not currently supported.

User Experience

The user experience is organized into a summary of billing insights paired with a neighbor comparison and weather insight. The level of detail displayed in each widget depends the available data and whether rates have been modeled for the utility.

Screenshot of the Bill Guide dashboard.

Bill Breakdown: A detailed look at the components of the customer's most recent energy bill, including the date range, specific charges, total amount due, and a link to a copy of the bill.

Neighbor Comparison: A brief insight showing how a customer's energy use from their most recent bill compares to that of their neighbors.

Weather Insight: A display of the number of extreme weather days that occurred in the most recent bill period.

User Experience Variations

New Versus Legacy Data Transfer

Several features in the Bill Guide show variations in the user experience depending on whether the latest billing data transfer specification or legacy billing data transfer specification is in use. The latest billing data transfer specification can support more data and features than the legacy data transfer specification. These variations are described in more detail in the individual widget descriptions. Contact your Delivery Team if you have questions.

Multiple Premises

If there are multiple addresses or premises associated with a customer's web account, a selector appears in the title bar of the Bill Guide. The selector is hidden if there is only one address associated with the account.