Post by drusso17 on May 13, 2010 10:36:14 GMT -5
We have been having many issues attempting to generate reports/bills for both ourselves and customers. We are using the E-Mon system with wireless meters using the Eka software.
Our system is unique in that it is located on a military base and the wireless meters often do not communicate for long periods of time (sometimes weeks) due to interference from the military base. When generating the month-end bills, if a meter did not report, you cannot simply generate the bills and have it be blank for that month. Instead, it gives an error message (which is good) but prevents the rest of the generation from continuing. So we must manually go in and detach all customers from meters that did not report. This is a very tedious process since it is not always the same meters failing to report each month. Not to mention, the next month, if the meter does report, you have to go back in and manually attach the customer again.
This whole process has become entirely unacceptable and has delayed our bill processing time significantly. We should be able to spend 15 mins polling for data and trasnferring everything from Eka to E-mon and another 5 mins to print out the bill. Period. Instead, it takes us hours to delete 0-byte files from Eka, then another hour or two to add and remove customers from E-mon, then more time to generate the bills/summaries, then more time to add the cut-out meters back to reports so that our company can see that they are not reporting. It can sometimes take us a week or two to get the monthly reports done when it should be under an hour!
What if anything can be done? This software just does not cut it!
Our system is unique in that it is located on a military base and the wireless meters often do not communicate for long periods of time (sometimes weeks) due to interference from the military base. When generating the month-end bills, if a meter did not report, you cannot simply generate the bills and have it be blank for that month. Instead, it gives an error message (which is good) but prevents the rest of the generation from continuing. So we must manually go in and detach all customers from meters that did not report. This is a very tedious process since it is not always the same meters failing to report each month. Not to mention, the next month, if the meter does report, you have to go back in and manually attach the customer again.
This whole process has become entirely unacceptable and has delayed our bill processing time significantly. We should be able to spend 15 mins polling for data and trasnferring everything from Eka to E-mon and another 5 mins to print out the bill. Period. Instead, it takes us hours to delete 0-byte files from Eka, then another hour or two to add and remove customers from E-mon, then more time to generate the bills/summaries, then more time to add the cut-out meters back to reports so that our company can see that they are not reporting. It can sometimes take us a week or two to get the monthly reports done when it should be under an hour!
What if anything can be done? This software just does not cut it!