New Software reason for some high bills

Some Toccoa City utility customers are up in arms about receiving bills that are double or triple what they are normally billed.

One customer posted a photo of her bill on Facebook that said she owed $28,000.

Other customers say while their latest bill hasn’t been that much, they have also received extremely high utility bills.

City Manager Billy Morse said Monday the problem is their new software.

The City of Toccoa is in the process of moving from one billing software platform to another and Morse says they are running into some glitches.

“We’ve had several multiple bills that have gone out that have been incorrect,” Morse said. “We may have to work through this week with some additional issues, but we should be back to normal after that…we do apologize for the high bills that people are getting.”

The City is converting their financial software to Smart Fusion and Morse said representatives from the company have been there every day helping to work out the bugs.

“There’s a lot of different things that are causing the issues, it’s not just one thing, things like the account number being put into the usage column so that could generate a huge bill,” he said. Morse also added that because the usage meters range from four to six digits, the software treats every meter as a six digit, creating a serious problem when calculating usage.

Additionally, if you have auto draft for your utility bill, Morse says the City will help you if your bill was in error.

“We’ll make it right, we’ll pay the bank whatever to make it right if we have to,” Morse said. “It’s on us, it’s our mistake. We have to make it right, if we messed up someone’s bank account, we’ll make it right.”

Morse said the next billing cycle should be back to normal.

However, if anyone receives a bill that they believe is in error they should bring it in, and if the error is the result of the new accounting software glitch, it will be corrected.