Orangeville Hydro Limited: Public Utility manages capital projects and tracks costs with WennSoft Job Cost
"With Job Cost, we have access to historical project costs. That allows us to compare historical."
Jan Howard
Manager of Finance and Rates
The WennSoft solutions have been used in areas around the world since its incorporation in 1995, from Australia to England, and from Indonesia to Orangeville, Ontario, Canada.
The town of Orangeville – 46 miles from Toronto – was founded in 1863, fronting a large reservoir known as Island Lake and the adjacent conservation area. Today it is home to 28,000 residents, though citizens like to say they have kept the small town charm while offering services of a larger area.
One of those services is provided by Orangeville Hydro Limited (www.orangevillehydro.on.ca), whose stated purpose is, “to provide safe, reliable, efficient delivery of electrical energy within the town of Orangeville while being accountable to our shareholders…the citizens of Orangeville.”
Orangeville Hydro first delivered power to 114 customers in June 1916. Today, 19 employees keep the power flowing to more than 10,000 customers from five substations. To assist in providing quality service, Orangeville Hydro has utilized WennSoft Job Cost since April 2006.
The utility had been using Microsoft Dynamics GP since 1999 and, with the assistance of WennSoft partner BDO Dunwoody LLP, added WennSoft as their software solution provider.
Implementation completed through challenges of fiscal and calendar years
Since Orangeville Hydro’s fiscal year is the same as the calendar year, implementation in the summer of 2006 included some crossover between the old and new solutions.
“We worked to get a condensed version of our costs for labor, overhead, material, trucking and contractors with an eye on the end of the year,” said Jan Howard, Hydro’s manager of finance and rates. “This included tracking projects that were already opened, leading us to use two systems as we transitioned to WennSoft. One project opened in ’06 and was not closed for a year and half.”
Just as private companies see the benefits of Job Cost by tracking the status of projects and gathering information that can be used on current and future projects, so too can a public sector utility like Orangeville Hydro improve their processes.
“Prior to using WennSoft, we did not have a work order system,” recalled Howard. “We tracked everything through general ledger, which was growing and growing. We also were tracking internal budgeted jobs and minor capital jobs, making sure they were charged accordingly. However, we lacked the ability to report on costs and had no ability to determine current valueof an asset when replacement was required.”
WennSoft helps Orangeville track billable jobs and meet budget
A public utility is not often thought of as billing out specific jobs, but Howard said this is a part of Orangeville Hydro’s annual capital income.
“If there is an accident and someone knocks down a utility pole, we may invoice the person responsible, or their insurance company, for the repair work,” she said. “We need to be able to justify the original expense for that asset and document its current value.” Howard also said that, “Work may be done for a company requiring particular services. For those special requests
we charge labor, trucking and parts. Anything we send a crew out to do needs to be tracked.”
With WennSoft, Howard is able to track costs to see if Orangeville Hydro is coming close to
budgeted amounts. Also, work orders for “chargeable work” are tracked in the work order system and directly invoiced. Maintenance is also tracked throughout the year with automated
time capture by the Operations department.
WennSoft also helps provide accurate information and a history on jobs or projects to refer back to a later time.
“In the past we couldn’t go back and see the initial cost of a project,” Howard said. “With Job Cost, we have access to historical project costs. That allows us to compare historical information to similar projects under consideration. We build a history – call up the last project, examine historical costs and go from there.”
Moving forward, Howard looks forward to utilizing WennSoft Job Cost and SmartList builder to better summarize data that is presented each year to several audiences Orangeville Hydro reports to, including the Ontario Energy Board, Town of Orangeville and Hydro’s five-member board of directors.