Housing Type Overview - Understanding Conservice Billing

Conservice offers multiple billing solutions for different types of housing markets. As such, answers to certain questions may depend on what kind of housing you live in. This article describes these different markets and can be used as a reference to help you decide if an article is relevant to your specific situation. Any article that is written specifically for a certain market will be noted that it only applies to those who are leasing from a management company in that market.

Multifamily - The multifamily market includes apartment communities, whether a large building or a collection of buildings in a neighborhood that have a common leasing office. These units often have master meters for each building that are read and managed by local utility providers. Sub-meters that are managed by the community owner may be installed in individual units to measure usage. If sub-meters are not installed, Conservice can use other methods, such as occupancy, square footage, or the number of bedrooms to calculate utility costs for residents in a multifamily apartment community.

Single Family - “Single Family” refers to a single house, not an apartment community, occupied by one family unit. These houses have utility accounts set up with local utility companies that Conservice manages so that services remain connected, even between tenants. Depending on the management company (and sometimes the state), Conservice can manage all utilities for the duration of a lease. In some instances, some of the utilities should be put in a renter’s name upon the start of their lease (see “What are vacant charges and why are they on my bill). In other instances, Conservice may also only manage certain utilities in between renters, as new renters should have an account(s) set up for all utilities.

Student Housing - Going to school can be stressful enough. Conservice aims to help reduce the stress of moving into a campus apartment and manage utilities for university students around the country. Dealing with roommates and ensuring that everyone pays equally for the utilities used in a shared unit can be a hassle. Conservice divides apartment costs equally between roommates based on the start date of each of their leases. Each roommate pays their portion billed to their account. Parents are kept up-to-date as well and are by default set up for e-billing to receive copies of their student’s billing statements each month. 

Commercial - Utility billing is not restricted to residential properties only. Commercial property owners may use Conservice to bill tenants renting business space. These properties are similar to multifamily billing, where there are often sub-meters installed to measure utility consumption for a specific unit.