Utility Bill Printing, Mailing & E-Presentment for a Georgia County Water Utility
Running an entire county’s water and sewer billing operation for nearly a decade — 500,000+ bills a year, ~80,000 accounts, lockbox-ready scan lines, and a strict bi-monthly calendar — with zero data breaches and zero SLA misses.
Client
Fulton County, Georgia — Water & Sewer Billing & Collections Division
(public-sector client; named with permission)
Vertical
Public Sector · Utilities
Scope
Utility bill printing, inserting, mailing & electronic bill presentment
Project Facts
- Fulton County’s Water & Sewer Billing & Collections Division serves approximately 80,000 residential, commercial, and industrial accounts — the majority billed bi-monthly, with a monthly cycle and a daily off-cycle on top.
- Every night, billing files must be validated, composed, printed, inserted, and mailed on a strict calendar — with OCR/MICR scan lines that have to be processable by the County’s lockbox on the first pass.
- Each bill carries customer PII and must move under strict chain-of-custody and USPS postal-optimization requirements, and must present a 24-month consumption graph, remittance coupon, and interchangeable messaging.
- Dove Direct was engaged in 2016 to run the complete data processing, printing, insertion, mailing, and archival operation — and has run it continuously ever since.
What We Delivered
- A purpose-built processing application on Dove’s proprietary document-composition engine that ingests the County’s nightly data files and produces print-ready bills — meter-read tables, 24-month consumption graphs, remittance coupons, and lockbox-ready OCR/MICR scan lines.
- Automated count-and-dollar balancing, suppression logic, and CASS/NCOA address hygiene, with exception alerting and reconciliation reporting wired in at every stage.
- Single-roof production: secure data intake, high-definition digital print on the HP Indigo 120K (premium 70# uncoated stock for crisp, vivid statements), camera-verified intelligent insertion, presort/co-mingling for the lowest postage, and direct USPS trailer induction — no third-party drop-shipper.
- Householding, auto-draft return-envelope suppression, on-demand bill pulls, and searchable-PDF archival, plus secure electronic bill hosting so customers can receive paper, electronic, or both by choice.
Why it matters
Utility billing runs on trust — every account, every cycle, on time.
A late or mis-mailed water bill is not a printing problem; it’s a revenue delay and a customer-service surge. At ~40,000 pieces a month, a single defect becomes thousands of phone calls and a missed collections window. Dove’s automated balancing, barcode-driven integrity, and camera-verified insertion put accuracy and audit evidence in front of every step — so the County can always prove what was mailed, when, and to whom.
Nearly a decade in, that discipline shows up where it counts: on-time delivery cycle after cycle, no SLA failures, and no data breaches. Dove’s segregated, independently secured environment has remained fully operational and uncompromised throughout regional cyber events — keeping the County’s bills flowing without interruption when connected systems were disrupted.
Running a utility billing program?
If you mail high-volume water, sewer, or utility statements on a fixed calendar — and the cost of a defect is measured in revenue, compliance, and customer trust — we should talk.
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