Utility Billback Automation for Multifamily Properties

The Client

Jack owned several small multifamily properties in Vancouver, Washington. His tenants shared utility costs, but the process of allocating and collecting those costs had become manual, inconsistent, and time-consuming.

Utility charges came in across different accounts and statements. Jack needed a way to identify which property each utility bill belonged to, allocate the correct percentage to each tenant, and send payment requests without manually updating spreadsheets or creating invoices every month.

The Problem

The existing process relied on manual tracking. Each month, someone had to review utility bills, identify the property, calculate each tenant's share, create individual charges, and follow up on payment.

This created several compounding problems:

• Too much manual data entry each billing cycle
• Higher risk of billing errors and missed charges
• Delays between utility charges arriving and tenant reimbursement going out
• No central database for properties, tenants, allocation percentages, and utility history
• No easy way to audit what had been charged and collected

The Solution

A utility billback system was designed using a dedicated Mercury bank account as the source of truth for utility payments. Each utility charge would be paid from the Mercury account, with transaction memos structured to identify the property and utility type — water, sewer, electric, garbage, or gas.

Those transactions would then be imported into a database containing properties, units, tenants, utility categories, tenant allocation percentages, and payment history. When a utility transaction appeared, the system would identify the related property and utility type, apply the correct tenant allocation rules, and generate tenant charges automatically.

Stripe would then send payment requests to tenants. After the first successful payment setup, tenants could be enrolled in automatic billing where appropriate, reducing the need for repeated manual follow-up.

Tools and Systems

• Mercury banking API for transaction import
• Structured transaction memos for property and utility identification
• Custom property and tenant database
• Stripe billing and payment links
• Automated import and allocation logic
• Admin dashboard for reviewing charges, tenants, and payment status

Outcome

The system transformed utility billbacks from a manual spreadsheet process into a structured, auditable workflow. Jack could see which utilities had been paid, which tenants had been billed, what percentage each tenant owed, and whether payments had been collected — all without manual data entry.

The result was reduced admin time, improved billing accuracy, and a repeatable process that could scale across additional properties as the portfolio grew.

Key Value

This project showed how a small property owner can use banking data, structured databases, and payment automation to create a lightweight property management workflow without needing a full enterprise property management platform.