The SAP Utilities (IS-U) component is a sales, billing, and customer information system that supports all business processes for utility companies. It allows companies to manage residential, commercial, and industrial customers and bill for services. Utility companies can customize IS-U to meet their individual needs. Key functions include billing, accounts receivable, customer service, device management, and work order management.

1. SAP Industry Solution Utilities (IS-U) Overview
Mike Davis
Program Director
The SAP Utilities (IS-U) component is a primarily a sales and information system that supports all
business processes and utility services of a utility company. The SAP Industry Solution Utilities (IS-
U) can be used for managing and billing residential, commercial and industrial, and prospective
customers. This SAP solution also allows utility companies to manage and bill customers who
receive services, purchase goods, or pay fees and taxes.
It supports a varied range of divisions and business partners and provides a large number of
functions. Furthermore, IS-U processes all business transactions and activities with a central
business partner jointly, and it offers account management, which integrates all of a business
partner’s payment transactions.
In addition, utility companies can take advantage of powerful customising functions and the
flexibility of the SAP R/3 System to customise the IS-US system processes to meet individual
requirements. This means that it can be deployed in utility companies of various sizes and shapes
– each with its own individual corporate and market strategy.
Utility companies use SAP IS-U to bill all the traditional divisions:
❑ Electricity
❑ Gas
❑ District heating
❑ Water and waste water
Within SAP IS-U the Billing and Invoicing module starts with meter readings and finishes with Bill
print out. This document provides an outline of all IS-U master data and functions relevant to
Billing Process.
The following list outlines the core business processes that can be handled by SAP IS-U:-
Billing Process Scheduled Billing,
Billing Process Produce Invoice Statements,
Joint Invoicing,
Process Invoice Printing,
Billing Process Bill Inserts And Messages,
Billing Process Send Sms For The Month,
Process Send E-bill For The Month,
Billing Process To Send More Than One Bill Copy For A Month,
Billing Process Display Latest Bill For The Month On The Web,
Billing Process Category Change,
Billing Create Maintain Installation Facts,
Billing Process Individual Reversal Or Adjustment.,
Billing Process Mass Reversal Adjustment,
Billing Process Produce Invoice Statements,
Billing Process Display Latest Bill For The Month On The Web,
Billing Process Mass Reversal Adjustment,
Billing Process Duplicate Invoice Statement.,
Billing Process Bill Batching,
Billing Create Maintain Rate Tariff Structure,
Billing Create Maintain Price,
Billing Create Maintain Discounts Surcharges Prices,

2. Billing Process Bill Simulation,
Billing Process Bill Exceptions And Errors,
Billing Process Unscheduled Bill
The key functional areas are as follows:
Billing Master Data
Billing Class
Rate type
Price
Operand
Variant Program
Rate
Fact Group
Schema
Rate Category
Invoicing
Invoicing Functions
Account Maintenance
Due Dates
Credit Processing.
Joint Invoicing / Integration
Outsorting in Invoicing
Invoice Reversal
Billing
Billing overview
Billing reversal and Adjustment
Manual Billing
Billing Exception
Billing Outsort
Billing Exception
IS-U is integrated with the SAP Service Management (PM-SMA) and Sales and Distribution (SD)
application components of the R/3 System, it can also bill service orders and service contracts for
services of all types, plus the sale of goods, such as meters, heat pumps, and consumption
devices.
IS-U jointly invoices (if desired and appropriate in terms of time) all the services that a utility
company provides to customers. It combines them into a single bill and processes them for
accounts receivable via Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable.
In addition SAP IS-U can include the billing results from external billing systems into the invoicing
process (via an interface). This allows IS-U to collectively create bills and process accounts
receivable with the billing results.
Of particular significance in IS-U is the collective billing of services from more than one company.
This includes convergent billing and inter-company billing.
With convergent billing, a utility company can manage the services of a third party and include
them in its own bill.
Examples include:
❑ Waste disposal in behalf of the city sanitation department
❑ Cable charges for telecommunications companies
❑ Drainage charges on behalf of the municipality.

3. With inter-company billing, several independent companies (each with their own separate balance
sheets) can combine their services into a single bill. The services are based on contracts with
different company codes.
Integrating services from more than one company provides advantages to both consumers and
utility companies. Integration is also the foundation for future forms of billing in a deregulated utility
industry where the services of any one division consist of service components from more than one
company.
Functions and Special Features
Basic Functions and Tools
With the basic functions of IS-U, utility companies can manage the addresses and regional
structures and generate scheduled dates for meter readings, budget billings, and regular billings.
The print workbench gives you the capability for flexible layout of bills and other customer letters
using SAPscript, the word processing system of the standard R/3 System. A utility company can
either edit the data in SAPscript and pass it to the printer, or it can make the data available for
mass printing at the raw data interface (RDI).
Other functions allow:
❑ Legacy system data migrations
❑ Configure screens with tab strips
❑ Enter non-standardised additional information as notes
❑ Store time-dependent data as information in a history
❑ Maintain number ranges to assign unique sort features
❑ Set up flexible access protection
❑Log changes
Master Data
The master data in IS-U includes:
❑Business partners
❑Contracts and contract accounts
❑Connection objects (such as buildings or land) and the premises, utility installations, and device
locations they contain
Device Management
For managing utility company devices, meters, and equipment, IS-U offers the following functions:
❑The capability to divide devices into device categories
❑Meter and device procurement, warehousing, and stock movements using integration with the
Materials Management (MM) component
❑Maintain installation structures with their existing relationships between meters, devices,
registers, and rate data
❑Maintain rate reference values and other information about the purchase of power
❑Installation, removal, and replacement of meters and devices
❑Device inspection and certification based on a sampling procedure or individual certification
In addition, device management allows you to create meter-reading orders and enter consumption
and demand. In this area, IS-U offers the following functions:
❑ Create meter reading orders and documents in printed or machine-readable form
❑ Enter meter reading results manually or automatically
❑ Conveniently connect external entry systems
❑ Validate meter reading results
❑ Correct or post-process meter reading results
❑ Monitor meter reading
❑ Valuate at flat rates consumption and demand on the basis of various replacement values (such
as the number of cable television connections or the energy intake of streetlights)

4. Contract Billing
Billing is the core of IS-U/CCS. It covers the billing of supply categories and ser- vices. In addition,
you can incorporate the services that you processed and billed with the Service Management and
Sales and Distribution components and the meter reading results from external billing systems in
IS-U/CCS invoicing
A contract is billed as follows:
1. The necessary data is collected.
2. The data is prorated. The system accounts for price and tax changes during the billing period.
3. The system converts the readings into billable quantities (such as register fac- tors or thermal
gas billing).
4. The quantities are valued using rates in which the utility company has stored its billing rules.
5. The meter reading results are validated and form the basis for invoicing.
IS-U supports the following forms of billing:
❑ Periodic billing
❑ Floating back-billing
❑ Period-end billing
❑ Interim billing
❑ Final billing
❑ Budget billing and average monthly billing or equalised billing
The most important functions of contract billing are as follows:
❑ IS-U supports as billing cycles both annual consumption billing and monthly billing cycles for
less than a year.
❑ The system bills nonresidential and residential customers in the same data structures with the
same functions. The two types of customer are differentiated only by the data.
❑ All forms of billing can me reversed and credit memos and back-billings can be initiated.
❑ In addition to automated billing, you can use manual billing
❑ IS-U/CCS supports many division-specific types of billing. Some examples are:
❍Thermal gas billing procedures
❍ Billing of public lighting using electricity or gas
❍Waste disposal
❍ Company and plant consumption of the utility
❍Billing for employees
Invoicing
❑Generates accounting documents for receivables and credit memos from billing documents
❑ Offsets accounting documents against down payments made, particularly paid budget billings
❑ Formats data for bill printout
❑ Creates new budget billing plans
❑ Supports the calculation of taxes
With bill printout you can flexibly design and display your bills according to your needs. You can
print bills using the IS-U/CCS print workbench or make them available to external print systems for
mass printing. In addition, you can insert individual notification texts or flyers with printed
documents.
Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable
Because of their large numbers of customers and generally monthly billing or budget billing
request, utility companies create large volumes of requests for payment. So that you do not have
to maintain this mass data under General Ledger Accounting, IS-U offers an integrated sub-ledger
called contract accounts receivable and payable. Contract accounts receivable is especially
designed to meet the needs of mass processing. At specific intervals, the system transfers the
accumulated individual postings to the general ledger of the Financial Accounting (FI) component

5. or to the general ledger of a third-party system. You can also transfer sales or service invoices from
the Sales and Distribution component to contract ac- counts receivable and payable.
The objective of contract accounts receivable and payable is to automate all trans- actions as far
possible. You only need to manually intervene when a transaction requires a decision.
The most important characteristics of contract accounts receivable and payable are the following:
❑You can individually customise account and open-item displays.
❑ In response to certain business transactions, the system automatically creates printed
documents (such as checks, account statements, and returns correspondence) and
correspondence with user-defined text.
❑ Using a neutral interface, the system can transfer and automatically perform postings that
result from automated incoming payments (from front-end systems, financial institutions, or
agencies), from collection procedures, credit refunds, or returns processing.
❑ The system can process and include in invoicing down payments for energy consumption
(budget billings) and for services to be performed in the future.
❑ You can impose payments in advance or security deposits on customers with a negative
payment history or a bad credit rating.
❑ Flexible dunning is based on dunning levels that you can define for each receivables item.
Every utility company can define the individual steps of the dunning proceedings itself. The
system maintains all information relevant to dunning in a history that is the basis for a credit
rating.
❑ You can calculate interest on debit and credit items at the line-item level. You can determine
rates of interest individually depending on the business partner or transaction concerned (so far
as legal requirements, for example, exist).
❑ You can defer receivables items or transfer them to instalment plans.
❑ You can send documents relating to different accounts or business partners jointly to a
collective bill recipient, for example, a housing construction company).
❑ You can identify receivables as good, doubtful, and irrecoverable and then process them
accordingly.
❑ You can manage and process unelectable incoming payments.
❑ Receivables items are included in financial accounting.
SAP Business Workflow
The SAP Business Workflow component of the standard R/3 System allows you to coordinate
business-process flows across applications. Underlying the workflows is a model of the various
business processes that you define.
A workflow consists of individual steps performed by a single person, possibly time-delayed, or by
a number of different people. The system can execute certain steps automatically, such as initiating
a confirmation letter after a rate change or logging changes (such as change in the contract, bank
data, or budget billings) that result from a customer contact. The SAP Business Workflow
component pro- vides technologies and tools for automatic control and processing of workflows. It
allows you to adapt IS-U/CCS and the standard R/3 System to meet the needs of your utility
company.
It makes sense to map a business process as a workflow if it:
❑ Keeps occurring in the same or in a similar form
❑ Consists of a number of possibly cross-application processing steps that have to be executed
as a structured whole
❑ Consists of a number of processing steps involving more than one person or departments or
that are time delayed
IS-U/CCS contains predefined reference workflows for some of the more important business
processes. These include processes for disconnecting and reconnect- ing a utility installation and
installing a service connection. These workflows are discussed in the chapter titled Business
Processes.
The organisational plan of the utility company determines which staff members are involved in a
workflow. You can define this organisational plan using the Organisational Management

6. component of the standard R/3 System. The system assigns tasks automatically to the appropriate
staff members. The system processes the assignment of work via the integrated inbox, which
supports staff members as they work. The workflow also ensures that required actions, such as the
notification, are not overlooked. A log allows you to trace exactly the steps executed for each
process. In addition, you can trace the status of any workflow.
If deadlines are missed, the system can automatically notify a supervisor. A flexible information
system allows you to analyse the runtimes of individual steps and processes. With this data you
can identify weak points in the application flow and optimise the relevant processes.
Customer Service
Every year, larger utility companies deal with several hundred thousand direct customer contacts.
In light of this large number, efficient processing of contacts is an important performance
characteristic of IS-U/CCS. In particular, entering business transactions places considerable
demands on the user interface, service flow, and response time of the system.
The front office is the most important part of customer service. This is where customers can obtain
information on all the important data and start all the processes that are important to their work
centres. Depending on the content of the business processes, it uses R/3 workflow management to
support the flow of those processes.
You can configure the front office to your requirements in Customising. These configurations allow
you to set up a work environment specifically suited to a particular staff member and to define
which data and transactions that the staff member is allowed to access.
In its customer information IS-U/CCS offers various ready-made views with which staff can provide
customers with information on, for example, their data and accounts. Workflow management
contains predefined transactions with which staff can handle such jobs as:
❑ Creating a new premise
❑ Processing a move-in
❑ Changing a contract
❑ Entering a fault report.
The initial step in any customer contact in the front office is the identification of the customer, which
is supported by a powerful search function, the Data Finder. You define in Customising which data
the system uses as search criteria. You can automate this step by integrating a computer
telephone integration (CTI) system and display an initial information screen that contains
information on the customer.
Once the customer has been identified, your staff can call up information screens and then branch
from there to additional, detailed views. If changes are required, you can make them on the spot.
For example, you can change bank details or process a move-in.
If you cannot complete the transaction because required data is unavailable or if detailed
processing is required, you can:
❑ Initiate a workflow
Depending on the definition of the workflow, you continue the transaction in
the back office when the necessary events have occurred
❑ Create a follow-up for the appropriate person
In this case, you can enter customer information in a note and attach it to the follow-up.
IS-U automatically logs the customer contact. You can enter notes on a customer contact. You can
quickly obtain an overview of prior contacts and sort them according to various criteria, such as
prior dunning events or field service operations. The log record for the customer con- tact
references the relevant object or documents. This means that you can display the dunning letter
sent for a dunning event, for example, directly from the log.
Work Management
The efficient performance of services is increasingly important for utility compa- nies in times of
growing competition and increased customer orientation. Utility companies consequently plan and
cost such services as work orders. Examples include:
❑ Setting up service connections
❑ Maintaining technical equipment, performing periodic device replacement

7. ❑ Processing repairs and reports of damage
❑ Creating collection and disconnection orders
❑ Performing energy consulting
In IS-U, Work Management processes those work orders. Work Management uses functions from
the standard Plant Maintenance and Service Management component and integrates them with
industry-specific functions from IS-U to form cross-component business processes.
In many cases you can bill customers for work orders. Where this is the case, the system executes
the Inquiry ® Quotation ® Order transaction before the work order and the Billing ® Invoicing
transaction after the work order. The system handles these transactions based on the integration of
the Plant Maintenance and Service Management and the Sales and Distribution components.
You can combine the billing results for services from Sales and Distribution with the results for
energy billing from IS-U in invoicing and show them on a single bill.
Information System
The Information System enables you to analyse the data resources underlying IS-U. Like other
components of R/4 IS-U offers a variety of analytics:
❑ Statistics
Thew statistics are based upon a statistical dataset, which the system updates continuously or
monthly from dialog or batch functions. IS-U distinguishes between three different statistics
applications:
❍ Stock
❍ Transaction
❍Sales
The Logistics Information System (LO-LIS) component of the standard system enables you to
evaluate the statistical dataset The LIS system offers many different options for evaluating,
analysing and presenting data
❑ IS-U Navigator
With the IS-U navigator you can get a quick overview of how the data interrelates within IS-U.
starting from any given object such as a customer you can use graphics to navigate through the
entire data environment of an object.