How can a water utility bill and collect for more of the water it supplies?
Connect the customer register, meter readings, billing and payments so each step reconciles against the last. Most losses are administrative rather than physical: connections missing from the register, readings that never became a bill, and bills nobody followed up.
Non-revenue water is often discussed as a pipes-and-leaks problem, and part of it is. But a utility that cannot say how many active connections it has, which meters were read this month, or which bills went unpaid is losing money in the office, not underground. Fixing this is also what makes a utility creditworthy: cost recovery figures a lender or regulator will accept require records that tie customers, consumption and cash together.
How to do it
Build the customer register against your actual connections, so every metered connection exists as a customer record.
Record meter readings on a set cycle and check coverage, because which meters were not read is as useful as the readings themselves.
Configure tariffs and generate invoices from the readings, so billing follows consumption automatically instead of by hand.
Record payments against invoices to make arrears visible per customer rather than as one lump figure.
Use the accounting module to bring revenue and expenses together, and report on collection efficiency each month.
Put the result on a dashboard the management team reviews, so gaps are caught in the month they happen.