Water utility billing software
Billing software for small water utilities.
Metered and flat-rate billing, payments, work orders, scheduling and accounting in one system — priced per hookup, starting at $100 a month. Built by people who run a water utility, and already running one today.
The billing runs on one person and a spreadsheet.
Most small water systems aren't running bad software. They're running no software — a spreadsheet, a shoebox of meter cards, and one person who knows how all of it fits together.
- That person is retiring. More than 60% of rural water operators are eligible to retire within ten years, and 45% of small systems have no full-time certified operator. When they go, the billing knowledge goes with them.
- One person wears every hat. At a small system the person doing Safe Drinking Water Act reporting is the same person handling billing disputes and answering to the board. Manual process isn't just slow — it's a reliability risk.
- The board keeps deferring it. Switching sounds disruptive, and nobody volunteers to own a failed migration. So systems wait — and end up switching reactively, after a computer dies or a vendor drops support.
- Enterprise software prices you out. The platforms built for cities quote six figures and a six-month implementation for a utility with 80 connections.
One system for the whole utility. Not just billing.
Most utility billing software bills. You still buy something else for work orders, something else for accounting, and you keep your service area in a filing cabinet. BasicBMS Water runs the whole operation, and every feature is included at the same price.
- Metered & flat-rate billing
- Customers & accounts
- Invoices
- Payments & Stripe portal
- Notifications & communication
- Work orders
- Scheduling — reads, shut-offs, turn-ons, testing
- Payables
- General ledger
- Geo-spatial mapping of your service area
- Unlimited users
- Recurring billing that runs itself
Coming next: One Click Meter integration — reads flow straight into billing, so nobody transcribes a number by hand again.
Priced per hookup. That's the whole formula.
$3 per hookup, per month — $100/month minimum
No tiers, no per-seat games, no bundles. Every feature and every user included. Add connections and it scales; lose them and it drops.
| Your system | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Under 34 connections | $100 (minimum) | $1,200 |
| 65 connections | $195 | $2,340 |
| 150 connections | $450 | $5,400 |
| 250 connections | $750 | $9,000 |
| More than 250 | Volume pricing — let's talk | |
That's about a dime a day per connection for accurate billing across the whole utility. Implementation is a one-time build on top: we migrate every account and meter, configure your rates, and stand up your utility live. A real utility-billing rollout runs into six figures — yours is a fraction of that.
You won't lose your history, and you won't be down for a week.
This is the part boards actually worry about, so here's the plain answer: the migration is our job, not yours. We move every account, every meter and every balance, configure your rate structure, and stand the system up live before you start paying monthly.
We do the conversion
Accounts, meters, balances and rates come across. You aren't retyping your customer list into a new system.
Billing starts when you're live
The one-time implementation is scoped up front. Monthly billing begins once your utility is actually running on it.
Nothing is locked in
Your data is yours. Records are stored and exportable — the door swings both ways.
It's already running a water company.
Pomona Artesian Irrigation Company — a water utility in the Yakima area — runs its accounts, invoicing, scheduling, mapping and online payments on BasicBMS today. Not a demo. A live, operating water company. If it runs theirs, it runs yours.
Questions we get from small systems
Is this only for big cities?
No. It's built for the small and mid-size water companies that enterprise software prices out. It's live at one today.
Can it handle metered billing?
Yes — usage or flat rate, generated on a schedule rather than by hand.
How do our customers pay?
Online by card, through a secure Stripe portal. Payments post to the account automatically. Customers can manage their own card on file, which means fewer calls to your office.
What does setup cost?
Implementation is a one-time build — we migrate your accounts and meters and stand up your utility. It's a fraction of what the big platforms charge. After that you're on $3 per hookup per month, $100 minimum.
Do we pay per feature or per user?
Neither. Every feature is included and users are unlimited. You pay $3 per hookup, nothing else.
We're a small association, not a city. Does that matter?
No. Water districts, associations, irrigation companies and small municipal systems all bill the same way — connections, meters, rates and a cycle.
What happens to the spreadsheet we've used for years?
It becomes the migration source. We import from it, then you stop maintaining it. The history stays with the accounts.
See it on a real water company.
Watch the three-minute tour, or call and we'll run your connection count and show you the live setup.
Comparing vendors? Read how to compare water utility billing software · or see the full BasicBMS Water overview.
