Customers save time and track energy use with Summary Billing

More than 400 businesses use Summary Billing to streamline their utility bill payment process. Heidi Fisher at Clock Tower Office Park uses it for nine properties.

More than 400 businesses use Summary Billing to streamline their utility bill payment process. Heidi Fisher at The Clock Tower Office Park uses it for nine properties.

Heidi Fisher, officer manager at The Clock Tower Office Park, uses Summary Billing to receive all of her MGE bills online in a combined bill. "We have nine properties and it's been helpful to have an easy way to compare costs between buildings. You can tell in a glance if something seems off, instead of using multiple paper bills to compare the data. I like that the energy data for each meter can be displayed in a graph. I click through each building quickly and see this year's gas and electric use compared with last year's."

Summary Billing lets you:

Combine all your paper bills into one online bill.
Have one due date.
Organize bills by region, department, location—or any breakdown you prefer.
View up to 12 months of bill history online.
Manage your utility budget easily.
Track energy savings when new equipment is installed.
Download data, rather than having to manually enter it into a spreadsheet.

Fisher also likes having everything in one place, online. "Having this information just a click away means that I check it more often and find problems faster."

All data can be downloaded as a csv (comma separated values) file directly into Excel or another spreadsheet program. "When I want to compare energy use, I can download each meter's data into a spreadsheet, rather than manually entering it off of each bill," said Fisher. "I have accurate and consistent numbers to work with, and this system makes it easy to compare the efficiency of current systems or the benefits we're seeing from new lighting or new windows."

Although most of The Clock Tower Office Park building tenants don't ask to see the energy data, some of the larger tenants have. "Summary billing makes it very easy for me to provide the information they're looking for," said Fisher. "And it also makes payments easy: just one remittance slip and I'm done."

To date, more than 400 business customers, with more than 6,500 accounts, have signed up for the program. "Some only have one or two accounts, while others, like municipalities, have hundreds," said Jesse Shields, an MGE business account manager. "Summary Billing is an obvious choice for large businesses, but small companies can benefit too. Most of those employees wear multiple hats, and not having to spend a lot of time and energy to analyze and manage their utilities means they can focus on running their business."

Learn more about Summary Billing here or call MGE at 608-252-7007.

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