AOUO Members

Utility Billing Services

Benefits for AOAO Members

Budgeting utilities allows for effective management of the association budget without surprise usage fluctuations.
You can avoid high property utility spikes.
You may be able to lower maintenance fees or temporarily halt rising maintenance fees.
We offer resident convenience with multiple options for invoicing the residential usage.
Boards can remove resident complaints about utility usage and fees from the board meetings.
We offer guidance with a failing submeter system in place, and advice on suitable replacements.

Why Submetering?

Condominiums communities in Hawaii have specific utility recovery challenges. Retrofitting a community with a utility submeter system provides peace of mind for both the Association’s Board and Unit Owners in a number of ways:

Utility submeters provide accountability of utility usage specific to residential units.
- Residents are encouraged to conserve when they pay for their utility usage.
Empowers unit owners or residents to change their utility usage habits.
- Unit Owners can see their daily utility usage and learn to recognize high usage habits.
Unit owners or residents no longer subsidize their neighbor’s utility usage.
- Pay for what you use, use what you pay for.
Provides a way to pull out seasonal utility usage fluctuation out of the AOUO’s budget guesswork.
- Once residents pay for their own utilities, it becomes easier to help lower and manage maintenance fees as well as predict your AOUO’s utility costs.

Why Utility Reporting?

When it comes to keeping an accurate representation of your property’s residential utility usage, Ikehu is there to help your Building or Community management personnel account for each unit’s portion of their utility usage. Our basic services include:

Integration of meter reads into an available web-based platform.
Monthly report to your property or site manager that matches up each unit’s utility usage with your property’s monthly utility invoice.
- This report includes an assessment of residential units with abnormally high or low utility usage in reference to their past usage preferences. This helps them foresee problems or prepare answers for resident’s questions.
24/7 available online portal that includes daily usage of each residential unit to troubleshoot utility questions from unit owners and /or residents.
Customer service to answer utility usage questions from Board Members, Site managers and property managers.

Why Utility Billing?

Our utility billing services are provided directly to and with unit owners and residents. This eases the site and property manager’s time and energy to focus on other areas of property management. Our basic service includes:

Monthly Report to Property Management Company, RM/GM, and the Board.
Integration of Meter System into Ikehu’s Web-Platform
24/7 Access to Reads for Resident and property manager
Customer Service to tenants/owners questioning their usage.
Monthly Bill Distribution.
Payment Collection.
24/7 Payment Options including ACH and Debit/Credit Card Options

We help unit owners reduce their utility consumption and its associated costs to place them within their utility usage goal. As a new billing provider, we ensure smooth communication with unit owners, residents, property and site managers to provide an easy transition.

Meter Maintenance

Whether your property has a submeter system or is interested in being retrofitted with one; having accurate, consistent, and reliable utility submeters are crucial in providing accountability of utility usage and billing accuracy for your property. Our meter services include:

Free health assessment of your current meter system
On island (Oahu) technicians available to keep your submeter system up and running.
In-person assistance with submeter system troubleshooting.
Expertise in utility submeter system troubleshooting, repair and replacement of system components.

Retrofitting Your Property

When it comes to reining in out of control utility costs, Ikehu can help. We specialize in designing utility submeter systems that will fit your property’s utility infrastructure. Not all submetering systems are alike and upfront costs can vary, so why not let Ikehu help with looking at what will work best with your utility management needs? Here is what we offer:

Free site surveys:
- We survey your property’s utility infrastructure, go over the utility monitoring needs specific to your property and provide equipment and service options as needed.
Ikehu is a national distributor:
- We work with all major utility meter manufactures that specialize in Electric, Water, or Gas metering.
- As national distributors we can offer you the most cost-efficient system components to fit your property’s budget.
We only work with and sell non-proprietary utility submeter systems only:
- This means that any third-party service provider can read these systems.
We design and program automatic meter read systems (AMRS):
- We customize your equipment to provide utility readings that fit what your property needs.
We can coordinate with your AOAO’s trusted contractor to ensure a retrofit that is complete and quality assured to be accurate, consistent and reliable.

Frequently Asked Questions

Retrofits:

Chain of events:

Site Survey
- What kind of utility infrastructure is at the property?
- What kind of services are needed?
Quote, Proposal and Summary are produced and distributed.
- Materials are sent to the site manager, property manager, AOAO board members as needed.
AOAO Board Meeting
- Answer questions and provide details about the retrofit project and services.
AOAO Signs Agreement
- Ikehu works with property manager, site manager and AOAO to implement property into our system.
AOAO provides down payment for materials as agreed upon
- Submetering materials are ordered.
- 6-8 weeks for materials to be ready.
Materials are delivered to the AOAO’s contractor to install.
- Ikehu coordinates with the AOAO’s contractor during installation and provides quality assurance checks to ensure equipment

Who do we work with?

Take Overs:

Billing:

Basic Services:

Increased Property Value

Many other property owners have told me that they do not have the money to make the initial investment to install meters. But I recommend that they find a way to fund it because the payback is rapid — usually about one year to 18 months, and the revenue recovery is ongoing. For example, when we purchased a 169 apartment home community in Indianapolis, I asked our bank to add the cost of meter installation onto our loan, which they readily did after I demonstrated how the program significantly increases property value. It cost about $225 per apartment home to install the gas submeters at the property, for a total of $38,025, and our mortgage increased by only $500 per month. The gas bill for that property alone is $85,000 per year and we recover about 70 percent of those costs, after factoring out common area and vacant apartment home costs, a savings of $59,500 per year, which far surpasses the initial installation cost. Another benefit is that our property value has increased exponentially, which I calculated by taking the $59,500 at a 9.5 percent cap rate (rates can vary) which raised the property value by more than $500,000.

Responsive and Professional

We have found Ikehu Utility Solutions to be an extremely professional company. Their representatives are always responsive and attentive to our questions, as well as being very knowledgeable of all state regulations regarding utility billing. They gave us suggestions for increasing our revenue and we have seen a marked increase in collections and revenue since we started using their services. We are very pleased with all aspects of their service and look forward to a long, continued relationship with Ikehu Utility Solutions.

Recouped Cost

The results did not disappoint me. In December the bills declined after we began billing residents for their water consumption. In March 2003 and April 2003 bills were approximately $270 per day; May fell to $254. The difference between $462 in April 2001 and $270 in April 2003 is $192 per day – a payback of less than one year. The payback actually is much faster because we are collecting about $2000 each month from the billing program, an amount that should double by year-end as new leases are signed.

Seamless Transition

Ikehu Utility Solutions has done an excellent job with our properties. They are very professional and have seamlessly transitioned many of our apartment buildings to the Ratio Utility Billing program, as well as setting up online automated meter reading and billing with our newer properties. I would recommend them to small and large property owners alike.

Conscious Energy Use

An obvious trend has emerged now that residents are responsible for their own utility bills. Before the days of submetering, it was not uncommon to see windows open or hear air conditioners running in the middle of winter with heaters going full blast. It was a way to cool down the apartment, but now that residents are responsible for their own bills, they tend to just turn down the heat.

Adding to the Bottom Line

We have calculated the increase in property value that comes along with submetering. For instance, on a property with 285 apartment homes with an average water bill of $7,000 per month, we can add up to $6,000 or more per month to the bottom line. At a 9 percent capitalization rate, that equates to a property value increase of $800,000.

Great Incentives

Accurately monitoring each apartment home’s electrical usage gives greater incentive for residents to conserve energy, since they are paying for exactly what they use. During a one-year period, an average of 17 percent less energy was consumed in the submetered residences.

AOUO Members

Benefits for AOAO Members

Why Submetering?

Why Utility Reporting?

Why Utility Billing?

Meter Maintenance

Retrofitting Your Property

Frequently Asked Questions

Retrofits:

Ikehu Utility Solutions Customer Testimonials

Increased Property Value

Responsive and Professional

Recouped Cost

Seamless Transition

Conscious Energy Use

Adding to the Bottom Line

Great Incentives

Hawaii Utility Billing Services

Thinking green to keep our planet blue

Hawaii Headquarters

Account Management

Sales Team

Customer Service