BillGrid: billing, collections and reconciliation on one ledger

The invoice is only the start

You send the month’s bills. Some customers use the pay link, others pay into your existing paybill, till or bank account. Some pay part of the balance. Some pay without a useful reference. The invoices went out in an afternoon; working out who still owes takes the rest of the week.

BillGrid, previously called Zana, is the product I build for that whole cycle. It brings three billing products together: invoicing, water billing and waste billing. They share customers, collections and a ledger, so adding a different kind of charge does not create a second version of what someone owes.

Three ways to raise a bill

Invoicing covers the business that needs to send a branded invoice, schedule repeat charges and collect by M-Pesa or card. Customers can pay through a link without creating an account. The business can also keep the payment instructions it already uses.

Water billing starts before the invoice. Connections belong to zones and reading routes. Readers capture meter readings on their phones, including when there is no signal. Those readings are checked, priced against the scheme’s tariff and brought into a billing run. A questionable reading is an exception to review before the bill goes out.

Waste billing starts with the round. The crew records which stops were served, which were missed and the evidence of collection. Charges can be a flat fee, per lift or based on weight. The service record and the bill stay connected, so a disputed collection can be checked against what happened on the route.

A billing run supports up to 1,000 accounts. The operator can review the run and its exceptions before posting it. Posting locks that cycle against being billed twice; repeating an action must not mean sending a second bill to the same household.

Keep the paybill. Reconcile the money.

A pay link is useful, but it does not account for money that arrived somewhere else. BillGrid lets the business keep its own paybill, till and bank account, then reconcile the statements it already receives.

An import can start from a spreadsheet or a PDF, including a scanned statement. Deposits are proposed against customer and invoice references. A match that needs judgment waits for review, and importing an overlapping statement must not apply the same payment twice.

The balance has to survive the less tidy cases too. A partial payment reduces what is owed. A payment against an account can clear older bills first. An overpayment can remain as credit for a later cycle. Those are movements on the same account, rather than adjustments hidden in a second spreadsheet.

Arrears have to lead to action

Knowing what came in is half the job. The other half is knowing what did not.

Outstanding balances are aged into 30, 60 and 90 day groups. An operator can work through debtors by zone or route, send scheduled reminders with payment links, and see the balance change when a payment settles. Receipts and customer statements come from that same record.

That connection matters more than any single report. The amount on a reminder must agree with the customer statement and with the money already received.

AI proposes. The team decides.

AI helps with statement interpretation, proposed payment matches, unusual meter readings and drafts of invoices or collection messages. Its job is to reduce the reading and typing between a record and a decision.

A suggestion that changes the books or sends something to a customer needs human confirmation. Faster reconciliation is useful only while the operator can explain why a payment was applied to that account.

The constraint I would keep

One customer balance, however the charge was raised or the money arrived. It is the rule that lets a water scheme, a collection round and a business sending ordinary invoices use the same collection discipline without pretending their field work is identical.

If billing and month-end matching are consuming your team’s time, see BillGrid. If your workflow needs something different, send me a brief.