Utility Management Solutions (UMS): Features, Pricing & AI Visibility

Utility Management Solutions, which goes by UMS, is a resident utility billing company in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. It calculates each resident’s charges from submeter reads or a RUBS allocation, sends the invoices, answers resident calls from a contact center it says is based in Minnesota, and installs fully wireless water, gas and electric submeters for new construction and retrofits. Its resident billing page counts more than 100,000 units across the 48 contiguous states, nearly 40,000 of them in Minnesota. Beyond billing it sells expense management, meaning it receives the property’s utility invoices and pays them, and vacant cost recovery. In the utility management category it is a full-service biller with a regional base, and the facts panel below is rendered from our vendor database with a source and verification date on each entry.

Who it fits

Our database tags no segment, because the site describes its market as multifamily, mixed-use and manufactured housing without saying what size of property it targets. Its testimonials come from management companies, one of them running RUBS and metered programs in the Twin Cities and Dallas, a housing nonprofit, and a single apartment owner, which suggests a wide range. The clearest fit is an owner in the Upper Midwest who wants a biller with local staff and a large local book, and who wants the option to keep collecting utilities with rent.

Pricing

Pricing is not published, and the site offers a free quote. Ask for the per-unit monthly billing fee under each collection model, since the vendor carries more of the resident follow-up when it collects. Ask whether residents pay a separate service or setup fee on their bill and how much. Ask for the submeter cost per unit by utility, and whether the meters are yours once installed. Ask what expense management and vacant cost recovery cost on top of billing, and whether vacant recovery is priced per invoice or as a share of what it recovers. Ask about contract length and the terms for leaving.

Integrations

The resident billing page names five property management systems, Yardi, RealPage, Entrata, AppFolio and Rent Manager, and says UMS can work with any other system. It describes the mechanics of its property-collects model: it calculates the charges and pushes them by API straight into the resident ledger, move-ins and move-outs flow to it from your rent roll, and it can produce a final bill on demand when a resident gives notice. Ask whether the connection to your PMS is in production with other clients on that system today, and what “work with any system” means in practice if yours is not on that list. Ask how often the rent roll sync runs, and whether the final bill posts to the ledger before the deposit is settled. In the UMS-collects model the resident pays the vendor directly and UMS sends the property a monthly reimbursement, so ask how that reimbursement is reported and when it arrives.

Limitations and questions to ask

UMS says a property can switch between the two collection models later. Ask what a switch costs and how long it takes. On onboarding, the site says a responsive property can be live in about a week and lists the steps: agreement, a setup form with rent roll, recent utility bills and the utility lease addendum, a check of state and local rules, a property build, a mock pre-bill, and the first cycle. Ask who owns the regulatory check and what happens if a rule changes after you go live. On submeters, ask what happens when a wireless meter stops reporting, how a missed read is estimated, and who pays for a replacement. Ask what the manager portal shows and how reports roll up across a portfolio. If you operate outside Minnesota, ask how many units UMS bills in your state.

Alternatives

The utility management vendor list compares every vendor in the category on the same facts. Guardian Water & Power also pairs wireless submeter installation with tiered billing and names five PMS integrations. Anchor Utility covers submetering, RUBS and expense management from San Diego. Think Utility Services is a Florida submetering and billing firm that also installs and repairs meters. Every Conservice alternative in one table lays out the rest of the field.

AI visibility

The current edition’s numbers sit in the Live from the Index section below, read from the run files each month; the prompts and sources behind them are on the row page it links.