If you answer these questions before you investigate different software packages, you are more likely to end with the software that is best suited to your organization. Don’t be swayed by sales people and bells and whistles. Get the right Utility Tracking Software for your organization.
General
- How many meters will you be tracking?
- What is your budget?
Analysis
- Do you need to identify the most inefficient facilities?
- Do you need to measure energy savings from your energy conservation projects or from performance contracts?
- Do you want to compare year to year bills or use weather normalization?
- Do you need to identify changes in utility usage patterns and spot outlier bills?
- Do you need to understand the relationship between production at your factory (or occupancy at your hotel, etc.) and utility usage?
- Do you want to have the ability to modify your year to year comparisons for changes in usage patterns such as new equipment or building additions?
Accounting
- Do you need to streamline your utility bill payment system?
- Do you need to allocate costs from master meters to submeters and subsidiary accounts?
- Do you need to create budgets and track your utility costs against the budgeted costs?
- Do you need it to interface with your accounting system?
- Do you want to enter in every charge associated with your bill?
Data Manipulation
- How are you going to get data into the system? Importing monthly data files or hand entering?
- How fast can you manually enter data into the program?
Rates
- Do you want to verify that your utility bills are correct?
- Do you need to evaluate different rate structures on your utility data to find the best rate?
- Do you want to apply the current rate to before and after comparisons of utility costs?
Reports
- What type of reports do you want the software to generate?
- What are you going to do with reports when you get them? Print them? Email them? Modify them on your computer? Save them?
- Do you have special reporting needs? Will the software allow customized reports?
- Do you want to report on Emissions? (CO2, CO, NOx, etc.)
Staff
- How sophisticated is your staff?
- How much time can they devote to utility bill tracking?
- Do you have trained staff to use software?
Services
- Are you going to want to create your own bill tracking database, or are you going to have it done?
- How is technical support?
- Will the vendor be available to partner with you?
Also, be aware that most likely none of the packages available will have all of the features you want, or all of the features you want at a price your organization is willing to pay. In this case, you are going to have to prioritize the features in the questionnaire, and from there pick the software that handles the most important tasks your organization requires.