meters are assigned. These readings are checked against the work turned in and have a tendency to discourage the thought of falsification, as the checking is done openly and any marked discrepancy is investigated.

If conditions seem at all to indicate that a man is dilatory in his work, he is followed very closely by the foreman, who takes a number of readings on his route, which are checked against the work turned in, both for accuracy and with the point in view of seeing whether any of the readings secured by the foreman were turned in as skips by the meter indexer, and any discrepancy in either of these cases is carefully investigated. Further, from time to time we place in the meter record binder dummy records, which help to keep the men alert. The readings secured by other departments in connection with their work, namely, installation and regular inspections, meters set to zero by the Meter and Test Department, meters exchanged, disconnections and change of name readings by the Distribution Department are observed as to their comparison with work of the meter indexer in determining the necessity of an individual investigation. The method of checks and comparisons are thoroughly explained when employes are engaged for this work, as we feel that a full understanding at the outset will tend to discourage any attempt at curb readings.

Our procedure of handling the skip readings starts as soon as the meter indexer turns in his trip binder, which is at approximately 4 P.M.; at this time a skip ticket is written up for each outstanding reading. These skip tickets are assigned to special men who leave the office immediately after all the indexers have reported, and the skip readings are then worked until 8:30 P.M. and then from 7 A.M. until 10:30 A.M., when they are again turned in and the readings secured entered on the meter record. The result of this is that when the meter record binder is finally turned over to the bookkeeper for entry on the ledger it rarely contains more than one or two per cent of outstanding readings. In a territory such as ours, where there are a great number of apartment houses and the entire occupants of many of the apartments work, we find that a night and morning swing for the skip men is absolutely essential, as this is the only time that access can be obtained. It is also very satisfactory from a bookkeeping standpoint, as it permits a very high percentage of the bills to go through the records at one time and leaves a very small percentage to go through the follow-up routine, it being our experience that an item out of routine costs approximately ten times as much to handle as an item that goes through in bulk.

THE CHAIRMAN: The situation that Mr. Jones describes about the difficulty of getting into some premises is something that we all have to contend with more or less. We have the same situation in Brooklyn, and attempt to meet it in somewhat the same way that Mr. Jones describes. I would like to

hear from some more about this matter of meter reading and meter control.

J. T. BROWN, JR.: We have adopted a card and form letter which we send out to all customers after the meter reader has called possibly once or twice and not obtained a reading of the meter, requesting the customer to show the position of the hands of the meter and return it to us in a stamped, addressed envelope. This method has been in operation perhaps three months, resulting in about 75 per cent of the customers reading their meters and returning their cards within five days.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Brown, do you find or Iave you had an opportunity of finding out whether that situation becomes chronic with any of the customers?

MR. BROWN: No, we have not, and we find the readings are fairly accurate.

THE CHAIRMAN: That was the point I had in mind in asking Mr. Brown how the matter of checking up the customers' record of the meter was handled. If we find cases in Brooklyn where the customer is habitually out and has got into the habit of reporting his own readings, we make some special arrangement with that customer so a reader can get in and verify the readings previously turned in.

MR. BROWN: I might say we never send cards in succession. We always check by indexers before the second is sent.

THE CHAIRMAN: Gentlemen, let us hear some more about this meter and billing method situation.

ROBERT DAVEY: I agree with the gentleman from Buffalo as to conditions regarding curb meter reading. At the present time the situation is very different from what it was a number of years ago when, I think, a great many of the schemes for preventing curb readings were put into effect. I know it was one that gave the company with whom I am connected a great deal of concern. At the present time we are using a different type of men and we are using different methods. Ten or fifteen years ago we were using everybody in the organization, almost, to read meters, and it was done during the last few days of the month. Now we are using men who are specialized in the work. We use a higher grade of men and methods used to prevent curb meter readings at that time are almost unnecessary at the present time. The method we adopted was to clip from the meter reading slip each month's reading, so that the reader had no figures to guide him. That entailed a great deal of work, the cost of which I believe it would be hard to defend at the present time. Therefore, in installing the machine billing system in the districts of the Consumers Power Company, the largest of which is our Grand

Rapids district, it was necessary, in order to operate the system, to leave one month's readings, and we decided to leave them all. This has materially reduced the cost and is working out very satisfactorily.

Just a word on the work that is performed by the meter reader in subtracting the kilowatt-hour consumption. When that was suggested I was inclined to look upon it with a feeling of disapproval, and I wish to give Mr. Jacobus much of the credit for the suggestion that came to us. I had occasion to visit his department. I did not have the privilege, at that time, of meeting Mr. Jacobus. I regret it very much, but I found-I believe I am correct, and if not Mr. Jacobus may correct me-that they used a method whereby meter readings turned in on a certain day would be checked during the night following, and readings which appeared to be incorrect were followed up the next day. My chief clerk at Grand Rapids asked the privilege to go him one better: to have the meter reader make the subtraction as he was walking away from the meter, and it was put in as an experiment; and he has assured me that it has not slowed up the meter reading, but it has reduced going back for re-reads almost to a nonentity. Therefore, we are very much pleased with the results obtained at Grand Rapids as a result of this method.

E. J. FOWLER: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, the work of the Customers' Records and Billing Methods Committee, as I see it, continues to be the most important work of the Accounting Section from the standpoint of the expense involved and the number of employes engaged upon the work. For instance, in the Commonwealth Edison Company we have practically a half-million customers, the costs going between a million and a million and a half dollars a year and the number of employes involved eight hundred to a thousand. I think that Mr. Jacobus, in suggesting a comparison of costs in this work for the next year, has touched upon a very important phase of this question and the right method of making further progress on this work, both in the service rendered and also in the cost. I can readily see that the Committee may have difficulty in getting figures from various member companies as to costs. Even those who are willing to give the costs very often would not report them in the same form, as their methods of keeping their costs are different. The present geographic division organization of the N.E.L.A. should greatly facilitate the work that has been suggested by Mr. Jacobus. There should be a Customers' Records and Billing Methods Committee in each of the thirteen Geographic Divisions, it being our most important subject and one which is common to all companies.

The National Customers' Records Committee meetings should be attended by the chairman of each of the committees of the Geographic Divisions, and I think that most of the companies would be willing that their representatives should take these costs. to committee meetings and talk it over with the

other members in the same line of business. And then these Geographic Division representatives could go back home to their own divisions and go over similar figures with the committee members of their division. In that way you would reach perhaps seventy or eighty companies, which would be accomplishing a great deal. Committee work on that subject should accomplish much. We have all of us, I think, during the past several years, especially during the last year, had a great deal of difficulty in simply keeping our work going and getting our bills out promptly to the customers because of the enormous turnover and the unsettlement of clerical help generally; at least, I know that has been true of a number of the larger companies. That difficulty has practically passed. I think now the time has arrived for improvement in method and reduction in cost of this work. Where there is such a large number of operations involved and such a difference in methods of conducting these operations between the different companies, there must be room for improvement in method and reduction in cost.

I would like to be kept posted and I would like to hear from those who have adopted bi-monthly billing as to the progress of their experiment along that line.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Ford, of the Philadelphia Electric Company, I think can tell us something about that subject.

JOHN F. FORD: We have had quarterly billing now since January, 1919. For years we had talked it over in the company, but were not able to put it across. War conditions were responsible primarily for our being in a position to inaugurate the quarterly billing plan. Things were not working as well as they should, due almost entirely to labor conditions, and we started in January of 1919 with quarterly billing to our residence customers only. We divided the number; the first month one-third of our customers received a bill for one month; in February another third received bills for two months, and then in March the first quarterly bill was rendered. Then it started to repeat itself, all bills for residence customers then being on a quarterly basis. We received no complaints at all. As a matter of fact, we received many commendatory letters from consumers, stating they would prefer to have bills rendered quarterly, inasmuch as they were of such small amounts. So far the plan has worked out very well, and I do not think we would ever go back to monthly billing for residence customers. We did have this advantage: the Gas Company of Philadelphia had always rendered quarterly bills for residential customers, which helped materially in furthering our case.

MR. JONES: I would like to ask Mr. Ford, did your losses increase to any great extent after you adopted quarterly billing? That is, I mean charged to uncollected bills?

MR. FORD: While we do not have any definite figures on it, I feel that our collections were very much better, due to the fact that they can be followed much closer.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Ford, what did you do in the first month in which you inaugurated this plan of quarterly billing as to your revenue for that month?

MR. FORD: The first two months, January and February, we set up a reserve, which was absorbed or charged back before the end of that same year. In other words, on our residence customers now, we have two months' revenue outstanding at all times.

Just one more point in answer to Mr. Jones' question: In Philadelphia, of all our residential customers who are not property owners, we exact a guaranty deposit, which deposit is usually equivalent to three months' billing.

MR. JONES: Have you a discount period in Philadelphia or do you simply extend credit?

MR. FORD: No, we have a penalty which is equivalent to a discount.

THE CHAIRMAN: I see Mr. Malone here, of the New York & Queens. He has not favored us with any comments. Perhaps he would like to add to our information on the subject.

J. R. MALONE: I do not know that I can say much on the subject, except one part of the report seemed.to me very important, and that was the subject of meter control. In our company we have accounted for every meter since the company was organized. We are accounting for each meter on the ledger and also each meter in stock at least once a year. The accounting department goes to the meter department and checks the meters in stock. This record has been kept up for several years.

On the matter of costs, I suppose we would not get very far if we did not have a discordant note once in a while. It seems to me we would not accomplish much in collecting costs of the different companies, because conditions are so different, not only local conditions, but differences within the companies. Some accounting departments conduct a very large part of the contract department work, and vice versa. I doubt if the costs would give us much information on the efficiency of the work.

R. MCMILLAN: I wish to express our appreciation of the idea of getting these costs. This is one thing we have been looking at all the time, and one thing that kept us away from machine billing. We spent several months last year in looking into the question of machine billing and making up detailed estimates or statements of costs as near as we could, and we finally came to the conclusion there was not anything to be gained. The final decision must rest on what it costs. It is very nice to send out a typewritten bill at twenty cents a bill, but if

you can make a bill with fairly legible pen-and-ink figures for ten cents, why you had better pay dividends. That is the way we feel about it.

In regard to bi-monthly or quarterly billing, there is a point in our work which prevents this to some extent, inasmuch as we have in our residence customers a great many people who use electric ranges. I know that does not obtain a great deal in Philadelphia. I don't know whether it does anywhere else where they have tried this bi-monthly billing or not. We have at the present time about two thousand electric ranges. We look forward with confidence to the time when we will have ten thousand. Those bills are five dollars per month, so a quarterly bill would mean fifteen dollars from each customer. That gets to be quite a risk, unless you can exact that much on deposit. New York State allows only a deposit equal to two months' bill, in which case, if we went to a bi-monthly bill, we would still be a month behind.

MR. FARWELL: The industrial engineering organization with which I am connected specializes in such work for public utilities. In this work we have occasion to recommend new systems. Any such system must produce a reduction in costs in order to justify itself. Cost data are necessary to provide a sound basis for judging methods.

Unfortunately, as several here have pointed out, there often is difficulty in compiling such costs. Our organization experienced difficulty recently when we tried to make an accurate comparison of the consumer expense of the Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company and that of the Commonwealth Edison Company. We found it impossible to get the desired accuracy.

It is rather easy to get comparative cost figures that are fairly accurate and very useful, but differences in organization, in classification of accounts and in other respects make it very difficult to get much accuracy. After the attempt just mentioned we felt that if we had to do the job over again we might get up a classification just for test purposes and ask the two companies to follow this set-up of accounts for one month. This scheme would produce comparable results.

De

You may be interested in some tests we have been making on machine bookkeeping for the Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company, in which company all consumers' bookkeeping is done by hand. Four different makes of machines have been on test. tailed costs have been collected on all operations performed under both the machine and hand systems. Our next step is to determine which machine is most efficient and whether that one produces results cheaper than can be secured by hand.

The collection and analysis of cost figures produce results that are interesting and often surprising. Progress in the important field of customers' accounting lies, first, in the devising of new methods, and second, in the appraisal of such methods through the collection and analysis of cost data.

Credit and Collection Departments to New Business," it should be understood that these remarks are based on the assumption that a Credit and Collection Department is a financial one, and is not a Commercial or Service Department in the sense in which the terms are generally used in our industry. This attitude is due to the firm conviction that the Credit and Collection Department is for the purpose of protecting the company against loss, but at the same time recognizing that its business must be carried on in a sympathetic, considerate manner, reflecting credit to the company and harmonizing with the other departments of the organization.

If the foregoing is correct, and the company is to be protected against financial loss through the Credit and Collection Bureau, it is obvious that all applications for service or orders for materials should be accepted or rejected for the company by the Credit and Collection Bureau.

It has been stated that the collection of an account begins when the account is opened, so that it is essential that the Collection Bureau assure itself of several things before accepting the account:

1st. That the order or application is standard (is in accordance with rates as filed with the regulatory body) and in accordance with company policy.

2nd. That the order or application is executed by a legal person (thus debarring trade names that are not registered, and socalled corporations that are not incorporated according to law).

3rd. That the signature is legally binding on purchaser or applicant.

4th. That there will be no loss due to uncollectible bills.

The question naturally arises whether service should be installed or connected or merchandise de

JOHN T. BROWN, JR JAMES D. CAMPBELL

livered before the Credit and Collection Department has accepted the application or order. The usual business practice is to have all orders passed by the Credit Department before filling them, and, with the exception of emergency cases, there appears to be no good reason for central station companies not doing the same.

In follownig this practice credit requirements are not put up to new customers after current has been in use or material delivered, which requirements they possibly cannot meet. This naturally causes considerable dissatisfaction and gives the applicant the opportunity to claim that if the requirement had been fixed before the application or order had been filled that their embarrassment would have been avoided.

It might be well to here state that co-operation on behalf of the Sales Department in the matter of credit information, which is usually easily obtained by the salesman, will do much to expedite the acceptance of new applications, avoiding expense on the part of the Credit and Collection Bureau and giving satisfaction to the customer.

As it is well understood by the public that the consumers who pay their bills also pay indirectly the uncollected charges of others, they will appreciate that a company, in protecting itself against loss, is as well doing its duty to its customers and the community.

It is generally recognized that first impressions are very lasting, and Collection Bureau employes, when coming in contact with prospective customers, have a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate that the company relations with its customers are carried on in a businesslike way, and at the same time impressing on the customer the fact that public utility employes realize that their business is to please the public upon whom the company is relying for prosperity and success in its business.

DANIEL Goss O. H. HANF

It has been stated that the collection of an account has its beginning when the account is applied for. If the correct information concerning the applicant has been obtained and the necessary steps taken to protect the company against loss, there will be but little difficulty in collecting the final charges, and losses from uncollectible bills will be at a minimum.

The necessary information on which to base credit judgment, if the application is for service to be used in business, would appear to be the past business experience of the applicant, including, of course, that with the supplying company, if any, and

if the application is for home use, the applicant's business connection and present account with the merchants in the community.

Special Attention to Final Bills

It has been demonstrated that final bill collections are worthy of special attention, and that if this is given the result will justify the expense. Some companies have assigned this work to a division of their Collection Bureau. This practice has many advantages over that of merging these collections with those of active accounts. The first thing those in