Service charge and metered water on one monthly bill
Charge the fixed monthly service charge and the water each unit metered on a single statement, delivered once and collected once - instead of two bills, two reminders and two reconciliations.
How it runs
2 bills → 1
fixed charge and metered water on the same statement
- One statement, one balance, one follow-up trail per unit.
- 2 bills → 1 — fixed charge and metered water on the same statement
- Same customers, same ledger, one follow-up trail
Who this is for
If you run Property management and bill the same customers again and again, this page is for you.
- Water Billing
- Property management
Most managed properties bill the same tenant twice. A fixed service charge goes out on the 1st for security, grounds, refuse and the lift, and a metered water charge follows once someone has walked the submeters. Two bills means two deliveries, two sets of reminders, two payments landing separately in the paybill, and a tenant who has paid one but not the other showing up as both settled and in arrears depending on which spreadsheet you open.
The cost of billing the same tenant twice
- A tenant pays one amount into the paybill and nobody can tell which of the two charges it was meant for
- Reminders go out for a charge the tenant has already covered, because the two records disagree
- Arrears cannot be answered in one number, so the committee gets an estimate rather than a figure
- Every month is two runs, two exception lists and two reconciliations for one property
One account per unit, one balance
In Zana a unit is a single account with a single balance. The fixed monthly charge rides on the same bill as the metered water, as its own clearly named line, so the tenant sees what they are paying for and you see one number owed. Set the fixed portion as a standing charge on the unit's tariff and it is applied every cycle automatically - prorated for a tenant who moved in part-way through the month, so a mid-month handover does not need a manual adjustment.
Charges that are not the same for everyone are handled by category: a ground-floor shop on a commercial rate, a studio and a three-bedroom on different fixed charges, a unit with a garden meter on its own tariff. Add a levy as a percentage or a fixed amount where the property carries one, and a minimum charge floor for units sitting empty.
Read the submeters, then post the whole property at once
The water half runs exactly as metered billing does: readings captured on a phone with the meter photo attached, offline where there is no signal, and anomalies - a reading lower than last month, consumption more than 3x the unit's recent average, a meter that rolled over - held for review rather than billed. The billing run then builds every unit's statement, fixed charge and water together, and stops at reviewed so the exceptions surface before anything reaches a tenant. Post once and the whole property is billed.
Deliver it once, collect it once
Each statement goes out by email, SMS or WhatsApp with a pay link attached, and the tenant approves an M-Pesa prompt on their phone for the whole amount - not one payment for the service charge and another for water. For the tenants who pay into the property paybill instead, upload the statement and Zana proposes the unit each deposit settles for you to confirm. A payment quoting the unit reference clears the oldest balance first, so partial payers work down the debt in order rather than leaving you to decide what they meant to pay.
Answer the arrears question in one number
Because the two charges share one account and one ledger, the arrears report is a single list: who owes, how much, and how long it has been outstanding, aged by block and route. You get a collection rate for the property, a ranked debtor list for the committee, and a customer statement for any date range you can hand a tenant who asks what they have paid this year. Receipts are raised and delivered automatically the moment a payment settles, so nobody has to be asked twice for proof.
What you’ll need
Water billing runs on every paid plan from Starter - KES 2,000/month for up to 100 billable accounts. Larger operations move up the tiers to Utility (7,500 accounts), and beyond that to Enterprise.
See every tierWhat this doesn’t do
Water Billing is billing and collection. It does not cover:
- automatic meter telemetry
- prepaid vending
- hydraulic network or water-quality operations
- inventory
- a full customer portal
If you need any of these, tell us before you sign up — we’d rather say so now than in month two.
The parts of Zana doing the work here
Run this on Zana
Set up in minutes — no card required — or book a walkthrough mapped to your billing cycle.