Smarty Utility Management vs Utilmate

Smarty Utility Management is Punch’s sub-metering and utility management service for multi-unit properties. It covers prepaid and smart electricity, water, and gas metering, alongside automated billing, vending, collections, and arrears recovery. Punch meters are installed as secondary meters, leaving municipal meters untouched and the supply live. Property teams can use NERSA-aligned time-of-use, block, seasonal, fixed, and demand tariffs, as well as Free Basic Electricity support. Billing options include flat, usage-based, tiered or block, time-of-use, demand, reactive-energy, percentage-based, and fixed-fee methods. The STS vending dashboard supports multiple payment channels and automated token receipts. Monitoring includes real-time consumption data, remote connection and disconnection, tamper, bypass, and leak alerts, plus tariff switching among grid, solar, and generator sources. Residents can use an installable Progressive Web App to check balances and purchase history and make vending purchases. The service also offers single and bulk SMS, audit trails, and lookup. Pricing is on request; listed plans are Rent-to-Own (36 months), Monthly Rental (Evergreen), and Upfront Purchase.

Utilmate is a web-based utility billing and customer management service for providers of electricity, gas, hot and cold water, solar, data and shared services. Its billing tools include invoicing, payments, customer management, automated collections, accounts receivable, reporting and exception dashboards. A customer portal lets people manage accounts, pay bills, set up direct debits, move in or out, and view usage. Meter readers and field agents can enter readings and notes on a smartphone or tablet, though meter-read charges may apply. Listed integrations include Xero, Buildium, Ezidebit, GoCardless, Square, Stratapay, Stripe, Bing Mail and Zendesk Support. Starter, Pro and Premium plans are invoiced monthly, with prices available from sales. Starter allows up to five users and migration assistance for the first 100 customers; higher plans list larger user and migration limits. A 60-day trial includes all features and requires no payment information to start. Utilmate says trial data is deleted if users do not subscribe afterward.