SimpleCapture Solution for HA Utility Bills

Utility Bill Tracking Requirements For Public Housing Authorities

One unique aspect of public housing authorities is the need to capture and retain significant amounts of utility bill information from numerous providers. Utility bill tracking is a requirement so that the housing authority can receive HUD reimbursements for utility costs, as measured against the three year consumption average, known as the "rolling base."

The accounts payable department must enter data for each utility bill, along with tracking information for the property, project, and general ledger account code. When dealing with paper-based processing, a significant amount of time is spent sorting the bills, tallying the numbers by hand or spreadsheet, applying the general ledger account codes, and then data entering the information into the housing authorities' accounting systems. Once the utility bill has been entered into the accounting system, HUD audits require that the bills and tally sheets be saved.

The Solution For Shrinking Budgets and Increasing Demand

Recover up to 80% of the time spent processing and posting utility bill data.
IMR's SimpleCapture Solution for utility bills provides a cost-effective way to process utility bills by reducing the burden of data entry, while providing a consumption calculation. The SimpleCapture process also provides automatic archival of scanned utility bill images, eliminating the need to take up valuable space storing paper invoices. With electronic images of utility bills instantly available, accounting will handle issues and queries much faster. The solution can also be extended to automate and accelerate the data entry process for all of the Authority's other invoices.

Simple To Implement & Simple To Use

The IMR SimpleCapture Solution for Housing Authorities is a desktop application that can be installed on a PC workstation. It will enable employees to be much more productive in the data entry process for the accounting department. IMR SimpleCapture is the document data capture application that's easy to use, yet it boasts powerful production features such as database lookups, business rules and even a self-learning feature that can automatically identify documents, locate fields and extract data.

IMR SimpleCapture provides out-of-the-box data capture capabilities without the need for costly template development or extensive personnel training. IMR SimpleCapture can intelligently learn the documents on the fly as the operator processes them. During document capture, the operator's selections make the system more intelligent thanks to the self-learning capabilities. The more document items that are processed, the more intelligent the solution becomes.

SimpleCapture Solution In Detail

Paper Bills Converted To Digital Documents

Electronic bills are easily processed immediately. Paper bills can be scanned by individual AMP representatives or by central accounting. Either way, the images show up in designated Hot Folders for each specific utility, which automatically invokes the correct 'Profile' for each of the different utility bill formats. The IMR SimpleCapture operator (in accounting), aided by auto-find and click-to-capture, quickly processes the utility bills. As quickly as one document is released, the operator is presented with the next document and its correct profile, facilitating mixed-mode processing.

Click To Capture Needed Data

With the unique click-to-capture feature, there is no need to select text, just a simple point and click causes SimpleCapture to capture the precise data into your field without requiring a copy & paste procedure; saving you clicks and time. Additional fields are captured in the same way with the cursor prompting each time for the next field to be captured. SimpleCapture automatically anticipates the next field to capture and highlights it in color for easy identification. The operator never has to take their eyes off of the document image. The program automatically presents each document image and the operator merely clicks on the location of the data to capture it.

The industry unique click-to-capture feature uses mouse-guided operations enabling the operator to position the cursor over the document image, causing the screen cursor to have a blue box attached that contains name of the next field of data that is needed (e.g. "Account#"). A simple click on the Account Number (no time-consuming 'roping' necessary) captures that index data and the cursor's description box is immediately populated with the text of the next field (e.g. "Consumption") required. If "Consumption Amount" is not present, the beginning and ending amounts are captured and a business rule calculates consumption.

Easy-To-Use Interface

The interface is easy to grasp by the new user so they can become productive immediately. The unique auto-find intelligent learning process works to automatically generate document profiles simply by recording the operator's click-to-capture mouse clicks. As a result, auto-find automatically reads and captures all of the required keywords (data elements) for the next and future occurrences of the same document (e.g. specific utility bills, invoices from the same vendor, etc). Whether there are eight utilities or thirty or more to keep track of, auto-find easily classifies a document the first time it sees it and then keeps learning with each new exposure.

Auto Population Of Consumption Tally Spreadsheets

The collected data is pushed to the Authority's utility consumption tally spreadsheets or directly into the accounting software. IMR SimpleCapture offers business rules and many data export formats (e.g. Excel, CSV, etc.) that can be used to consolidate utility account numbers to specific project numbers (G/L account codes); ultimately enhancing the process of data entry into the Authority's accounting system. The overall labor for collecting this data and reporting to HUD is greatly reduced; and using easily accessible electronic images of bills significantly reduces the time involved for handling issues, queries, and audits.

The Solution In Summary

In summary, the IMR SimpleCapture Solution for Housing Authority Utility Bills will automate the data collection process, enhance the utility bill calculation efforts, and provide a document image repository of utility bills. In return, Authority personnel will get back significant amounts of time by streamlining data collection and will benefit from improvements in research, reporting, and auditing times.