PROBLEM: Managing utilities for house hacking and rentals

[Patty Yang]

For househackers and rental property owners:

I find that managing utilities is a menial manual set of tasks every month from checking the bill and sending to tenants, but also can take more time if you have to keep on checking if your tenants pay for it. Do you have the same problem? What are the top problems you face? Has anyone found a way to automate this or tools they use?

I have utilities that needs to be billed in my name(like water) and I also have tenants(in house hacking situation) who have different utilities owed per their agreements(yes i know I probably should change that soon). For example, I have tenants who have utilities included in rent with a cap at $100 so if they go over they pay excess. 

Wondering if people are experiencing this and have found a better way to manage this process. 

[Patty Yang]

@Daniel Haberkost what you mentioned that your friend does definitely makes it a lot easier yet still requires manual monitoring if tenants overuse.. so was wondering if there was some other technique people who house hack or who have rental property use to just automate that whole process. ... not sure if it’s just not that big of a deal.. I’d find it more of a relief since I would want to be monitoring as I’m super attentive to it to make sure overages don’t accrue over time.. but another problem is.. doing this at scale..