No need to manually enter your utility bills as an expense each time you receive the statement from the Utility Company. Just arrange to have the email sent to your RentMaxPro account and it will be automatically imported and assigned to the correct building and rental unit.
Importing Emailed Invoices
Most utility companies (electricity, gas etc) and service companies (telephone, internet, etc) and some other companies will send you an email each month when they generate their billing statements. Usually these emails will include the basic details of the latest statement, including the amount owing, the date payment is due, and your account number. What they don’t usually include is which address this is for, nor what services are actually included in the statement. For example, is account #123456 for just gas, or both gas and electricity? To answer that, you need to either look at the actual statement, or look it up somewhere else.
Sometimes they will attach the actual statement, but usually they won’t, prefering to direct you to their website to download the statement, making it a pain to find that crucial information so that you can then enter the new expense into RentMaxPro.
Since the format of these emails is the same each month, we can usually automate the process, saving a heap of time and hassle. To do this you need to do the following:
- Navigate to Properties -> List/Add Utility & Service Accounts
- Press the Green Button to Add a New Account
- Select your Utility Company. If your company is not listed please see below.
- Complete the rest of the form. The method of payment will most likely be either Pre-Authorized Debit, or one of your credit cards.
- Arrange with the utility company to have their emails sent directly to bills@[your RentMaxPro name].montegoventures.com
Then, each time they send out a statement, it will be parsed and automatically imported as a new expense. If you selected the ‘Forward Emails’ option in Step 4 above, the email will also be forwarded to your inbox so you still receive it (and any other emails sent to that same addres) as per normal.
Then, to reconcile the expense with your bank statement all you have to do is click the ‘AutoMatch Expenses’ button on the reconciliation page.
NOTE: The statments will be imported using the STATEMENT date, NOT the DUE DATE. This is deliberate, as the statement date reflects when the expense was actually incurred, and enables functions such as the ‘shared utilities’ program to work. It does mean, however, that when you reconcile the date of the bank statement entry and the date of the expense will not match – the former being, of course, dated later than the latter. However, the AutoMatch will still match them up.
If Your Utility Company is Not Listed
It may be that we have not yet set up the system to be able to import emails from your particular utility company. In that case, just let us know by sending one of their emails to us at [email protected] and we will do our best to make it happen.
Make sure that the email contains the following details:
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- Your account number,
- The amount of the invoice,
Ideally it would also contain:
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- The statement date, and
- The payment due date.
Once we have set everything up for importation, we will send you an email to notify you. If for technical reasons, we are unable to set it all up, we will also notify you.
Finally, you can also use that page to keep track of various account numbers etc. even if you have no intention of having them automatically imported.
IMPORTANT Email invoice importation will work only if the following conditions are met:
- Utility accounts must be set up so that each account services either one entire building, or one (single) unit within that building. It will not work, for example, if a bill is for electricity supplied to just two units within a fourplex.
- Likewise, the account must be set up so the same services are supplied to all the units covered by the account. It will not work, for example, if the account is for water only to a main floor suite, but water AND electricity to a basement suite.
This is because there is no way to separate out the parts of the bill to the appropriate units without reading the actual statement carefully. This is laborious so, for your own peace of mind, we recommend that you don’t set up your accounts like that. Keep them simple, and you will be able to import them automagically.