Sending an Ebill to a Customer

What is an Ebill ?

With WBAR 5, you have the option of sending an electronic bill to your customer's email address. The electronic bill, Ebill for short, is created from the same data used to produce printed bills. After charges have been calculated, you can send any customer with an email address an Ebill.

Tri C recommends that you use the Ebill option as an additional service feature and not your only means of bill delivery. Because email addresses constantly change and internet service can be easily interrupted, relying solely on electronic billing may not be a good idea. On the other hand, notifying your customer via an Ebill on the same day that you mail out bills is a an excellent way to enhance your billing service and improve cash flow.

Set Up to Send Ebills

In order to send a customer an Ebill, you must first fill in your department's email address and email server information found in the System Registry. Only the system Administrator can access the System Registry to make changes. A valid Administrator password must be entered. To open the Registry, go to the main menu and click on System, Registry Settings. Below is an example of the fist page. Make sure you have filled in your department's name, address, phone number, etc. and include your department's email address. A valid email address is required to send Ebills.

You must also tell WBAR the name of the email server your department uses to send and receive email. Click on the System Variables tab at the bottom of the screen and fill in the Email Server name field. You must use the name of the email server assigned to you by your internet service provider. If you do not know the name of your email server, contact your internet service provider to get the name or IP number they have assigned to the server for your email account.

**Some free national email providers like AOL, Juno, and Yahoo may not permit you to send a large number of electronic messages in a batch mode. If that is the case, consider using a email service offered by a local ISP.

You must enter a valid email address for each customer you want to be able to send an Ebill to. Go to the customer data screen and type in the customer's email address in the email field. You must also check the Ebill checkbox if you want the customer to show up in the list of billable accounts.

Sending the Ebills

After you have calculated your billing charges, you may send Ebills either before or after you have printed your paper bills. Sending Ebills will not affect the customers balances or the charges that you have pending for paper bill printing. You must Update your billing charges in order to actually add the new charges to the customer accounts. To create the electronic Ebills, click on Billing, Send Bills To, Email. The following form will appear.

Use the Due Date control to set the Due Date you want to show on your Ebills. Check the Select All checkbox if you want to send to all of the accounts shown or individually check the accounts you want to send. There is no limit to the number of Ebills you can send at one time. Click on the Message button if you want to add your own billing message to the Ebills. You may type in four lines of 40 characters each in your message. When you are finished selecting accounts, click on the Create Email Bills button. The following form will appear.

You must be connected to the internet before sending Ebills. If your department uses a dial up internet service, you may need to make your connection before you click the Send button. WBAR has a built in internet connection process which will attempt to launch your browser and make the internet connection for you. If your internet service provider requires a user name and password, you must type them in to establish the connection. Once you have an internet connection, click on the Send button and WBAR will transmit all of the Ebills to their respective customer email accounts.