Utility bills cover utility services including Gas, Electricity, Broadband, Water, Mobile and in some circumstances Waste Management. By closely examining your bills carefully, you can gain a insight into understanding your consumption or usage patterns and find ways to reduce costs over the long term periods.
By getting a better understanding on your utility bills you can take control of your bank balance, and plan for your future expenditure!
What Is A Utility Bill
Understanding what a utility bill is easy. A utility bill in an invoice, which will be from a utility provider usually once a month or in some cases every quarter (3 months). A utility bill covers charges for various services such as Electricity, Gas, Water, Home Phone, Broadband and Mobile.
A Utility Bill is something you need for essential needs such as surviving or working. For a service to qualify as a utility you need to ask yourself do I need this to survive in my day to day life or require it to work. For example: You can’t live without water you will eventually die if you don’t drink water for over 3 weeks… Yes we can live without electricity, broadband and gas, but these are essential needs for day to day living.
A Utility Bill is a reflection of how you keep your household running smoothly. Consider these services as the infrastructure of your home and you can live, work or survive with out them!
What Are Utility Bills?
A Utility Bill is a specific invoice despatched to you via a utility provider for the consumption of utilities used in a particular month. Utilities are simple offerings essential for the functioning of a household or business. These offerings include power (electric and gas), water, broadband and phones.
Types of Utilities
- Electricity: Electricity is used in many ways including providing power to lights, ovens, heating, charging cars, phones etc.
- Gas: Gas is used in the home primarily for heating the home, cooking food or heating water.
- Water: Water in the home allows you to survive by providing clean drinking water. It can also be used for cooking, cleaning, and bathing.
- Broadband: Internet gives us access to the world wide web, it’s used daily for things like working, speaking with friends, gaming etc.
- Phones: Mobile phones and landline telephones connect the word and allow us to work and community with friend and family.
Save Money On Your Utility Bills
Example Of A Utility Bill
Here are some real examples of a utility bill from the multi service utility provider Utility Warehouse. Utility Warehouse is a multi utility service provider. They offer all of your utilities under one roof, in the examples shown below they include, gas, electricity, broadband, landline and mobile.
Page 1 of a Utility Bill: Page one consist of the breakdown of the full charges, which are due for payment via direct debit. As you can see the full breakdown includes Energy (gas and electricity), Mobile and home phone and broadband. The total cost of this monthly utility bill from Utility Warehouse is £274.02. This total price includes VAT.
Page 1 also includes utility warehouses logo, phone number and details for you to log in into your online account. It confirm the date the invoice was produced, the month it covers and your account number!
Page 2 of a Utility Bill: On page 2 of the Utility Warehouse utility bill it shows the energy breakdown. In this example you can see that £110.19 has been used on the electricity and £110.45 has been used on the gas, so in total the charges for energy are £220.64.
It also shows the phone numbers for the customer service team as well as the technical team. It also gives pointers on how you can use less energy!
Page 3 of the Utility Bill: Page 3 of the example of the a utility bill shows the breakdown of the electricity charges for the month. In this example you can see the invoice is for 30 days from 31/03/2024 – 30/04/2024. It shows the meter reading from last month and the current meter reading, then the invoice is calculated based on the amount used in the month x by the unit rate (p per kWh) and the daily standing charges are added on top.
The utility bill also shows the address details, meter serial number and MPAN.
Page 4 of the Utility Bill: Page 4 of the utility bill is the gas part of the invoice broken down so you can easily see how much you have used and how they have come to the balance of the bill.
Like the electricity bill the gas bill shows the dates the invoice is from and to, it also includes the meter readings and the prices you are being charged.
The gas bill in this example also gives an emergency gas phone number, which is 0800 111 999 if you can smell gas you need to call this number immediately.
Page 5 of the Utility Bill: The next page in this example of a utility bill is page 5. This page is for the mobile simcard. It shows the phone number, which is it for. It also shows the amount of the bill and in some instances if calls were made it would show you the breakdown of data used and calls made.
Page 6 of the Utility Bill: The final page to be shown within the utility bill bundle is the 6th page, which is the breakdown for the home phone and broadband charges.
On this page it includes the phone number of the landline as well as the breakdown in charges for the month for broadband and home phone.
Utility Warehouse
Utility Warehouse is multi service utility provider that offers the option to consolidate all your home services into a one single monthly bill. Utilties they can offer in one bill include electricity, gas, broadband, landline, mobile phones, sim cards, house insurance and boiler and breakdown cover.
They are an award winning utility company that boast to winning awards such as Best Value for Money, 2023, Best Overall Customer Satisfaction, Runner Up, 2023 from U Switch and other awards like Utilities Brand of the Year, 2018 from Which?
Utility Warehouse also known as telecoms plus, which was their original name as they used to just offer telecoms, but since the 90s they have branched out into energy services as well as mobile and insurance.
They currently have over one million customers and gained a lot of growth during the energy crises when they were the only energy supplier offering a fixed discount against the governments energy price cap.
One Utility Bill
There is an option to amalgamate all of your utility bills together with one company on one monthly invoice!
If you are looking for a one stop shop for all of your utility needs then it is possible to have all of your utilities with one company. Who is thar company I hear you ask, well it is Utility Warehouse.
They offer a one utility bill service consolidating all your utility expenses such as electricity, gas, water, internet and mobile.
Some people have their utilities with different companies, for example some people will have their gas with British Gas, their electricity with Scottish and Southern Energy, their home-phone with BT, broadband with Sky and mobile with O2.
When dealing with multiple different companies a hurdle you will face is that the renewals dates won’t match up. It can be very time consuming and difficult to keep on top of, however by combining all your utilities with one company will eliminate all of these issues and save you time and money!
If you find yourself in this predicament then there is a solution and that solution would be for us to switch all of your utilities to Utility Warehouse where you will receive one utility bill a bill for all your utilities a month! We handle everything from start to finish so the process is very easy and simple.
What Counts As A Utility Bill
What counts as a utility bill are different types of services such as electricity, gas, water, phone and broadband. A utility bill is the statement, which will land in your email inbox or through your letterbox at the end of the month requesting you to pay that the previous months usage.
Sometimes it can be confusing to know what counts as a utility bill and what doesn’t. Things that don’t count as a utility would be bills such as council tax, rent or mortgage payments, car finance payments. For a service to be classified as a utility it needs to be a critical service, which allows you to survive.