How does billing for services and utilities work?
Services
Individual bills are prepared by the building management companies (BMS), usually within 4 months of the end of the billing period (end of the year). This means that, optimally, we should receive all billing documents during May. These documents are forwarded without delay to the billing department, which processes them further.
How long does it take me to get the bill?
It can be a month, sometimes two. Depends on how complicated your case is.
- The documents sent by the building management are calculated for one calendar year (but it can be less). However, we have to recalculate everything because you only live in our apartment from April to December, for example. Then we cannot ask you for all the costs, some of them go to the landlord and we have to remove these charges from the billing. So to be as fair as possible to you, we practically break the whole bill down into its component parts and rebuild it.
- Sometimes it happens that there is an error in the documentation from the building management, which is then dealt with by corrective billing. And we wait for them to be processed and sent. In the meantime, if you have already received bills from us, we must also issue corrective bills.
- It happens that we do not receive completely complete documents to be able to process the bills. We are therefore waiting for the missing data to be delivered.
- Although we work on bills all year round without delay, of course, the greatest workload is before the holidays. We manually process and then check each bill to ensure that you are only actually paying what you are supposed to. Nothing extra.
Energy
If you don't have utilities (electricity, gas) in your name, but they are in our name, the procedure is similar to that for utility bills. However, the bills are not sent by the HOA, but directly by the energy suppliers. In our case, there are two options:
- We've overwritten the energy on you. You pay the advance payments directly to the supplier and the bills will be sent directly to you by the PČE.
- The energy is written to us. You pay the advances as part of the rent and utilities on the record sheet and we will process the billing between you and any additional subtenant. This means that:
- The documents sent by the supplier may be calculated for different periods. For utilities, we receive the supporting documents throughout the year, depending on the date the utilities were re-written (for example, mid-year due to better utility prices) and also the date the distributor did the utility readings. If you have not lived with us for the whole of the period covered by the invoice, we budget the energy according to the date of your sublet agreement and also the readings from the handover/acceptance report. In order to be as fair as possible to you, we also check the balances sent by the supplier and virtually rebudget the entire bill.
- It can also happen here that the supplier makes a mistake. If we don't like the bill, for example if the arrears are too high, we check whether it is in order and whether there has been any mistake.
- As with service billing, it may happen that the surge is the largest in one period due to the large number of overrides. Although we prepare for this and strengthen our team, we don't always get everything done as we would like.
So if you move out during the year and no longer live with us, you may not get your utility bill until you have a new place to live. It is definitely worth waiting to make sure you don't get overcharged and that everything is done properly. So please be understanding.
How can I save money and keep my utility bills as low as possible?
For example, did you know that an appliance in a socket consumes electricity even if it looks like it is switched off? It is still in so-called standby mode. Thanks to the switching clock in the socket, you can set when you use the appliance most often and actually have it unplugged during the morning and overnight, for example.
It is also possible to save money on normal household operations. For example, only use the amount of water you need when cooking, use the right size pot for the hob and use lids so you don't leak heat unnecessarily.
Washing dishes in the dishwasher saves 30–65% of water. Similarly, showering saves 30–50 litres compared to bathing.
Short and thorough ventilation with windows wide open is the optimal way. Not only is more air exchanged, but the walls don't get cold like a slow fan ventilation.
There are plenty more tips on how to save on energy on our blog.