A month of waste billing, round by round

Illustrative example. Jay's collection company is a composite built to show how a month runs. It is not a customer story, and the figures are assumptions used to explain the workflow, not measured customer results or market prices.

Jay runs a waste collection company serving 400 premises in one zone: 340 households and 60 shops, salons and restaurants. Two trucks, two crews, one office phone. Until this year, billing meant a spreadsheet, a stack of route sheets and a long first week of every month.

This is October, run end to end in BillGrid - what happened, in what order, and what every number came to.

The setup Jay did once

The example starts with configured accounts, tariffs, routes and schedules. Setup time depends on data quality and the operation's needs.

With automatic planning enabled, the office reviews the rounds generated from its schedules before dispatching crews. Check active premises, exceptions and any calendar changes.

Week by week: twenty rounds, 1,840 stops

October 2026 had four Mondays, four Tuesdays and four Wednesdays. That gave Jay 12 household rounds and 8 business rounds - 20 rounds in all, and 1,840 stops: 1,360 household stops and 480 business stops.

Each morning followed the same routine:

1. The supervisor opens the day's round and chooses Assign crew - a driver and two loaders.
2. Dispatch round puts it on the crew's phones.
3. Start round when the truck leaves the yard.

On the route, the crew opens the crew sheet and taps an outcome at every gate. Collected stops need a photo, because Jay requires one. Every stop is stamped with the time and, where the phone allows it, the location. On the back streets of Route C there's no signal at all - the crew sheet saves the stops on the phone and syncs when the truck reaches the main road.

The misses had stories. On 20 October, the Route B truck was full before the last street and the crew marked 13 stops missed by crew, with "vehicle full" as the reason. On the business route, a breakdown on 14 October cost six stops. And five more turned up later - more on those below.

Why the outcomes matter. In this example, the agreed terms keep not-out, no-access and refused stops billable, while missed-by-crew stops receive a rebate. These are the example operator's terms, not a universal rule for every collector. We wrote about why in proof of collection.

Closing rounds and the tip

When each truck returned, the supervisor reviewed the stop outcomes and closed the round. Missing records needed checking before billing. Disposal tickets were retained alongside the required transport and receiving-site records.

Every trip to the tip became a weighbridge ticket under Disposal: the site, the ticket number, the stream, the vehicle, and the gross and tare weights. In October Jay recorded 24 tickets - 49.1 tonnes net to the landfill and 9.1 tonnes to a recycler, 58.2 tonnes in all. The top of Disposal showed 15.6% diverted from landfill, the figure Jay's estate committees now ask about.

The billing run

On 1 November, the office opened Billing runs, chose New run for October across all accounts, and clicked Calculate.

The one thing that needed attention

The office found 110 accounts needing review - every premises on Route C. The 28 October round had incomplete records after a crew phone synced late. The office paused those accounts for review rather than assuming every stop had been completed.

The supervisor checked with the crew, recorded five unserved stops as missed by crew and closed the round. The office calculated the run again and reviewed the account charges.

What the run came to

A household paying KES 600 for four lifts that lost one to the crew was billed KES 450, with "1 of 4 collections missed" on the bill. A business paying KES 2,400 for eight lifts that lost one was billed KES 2,100. Nobody had to ask for the discount.

Jay clicked Post invoices, then Send bills. Bills were sent through the enabled channels for each customer - each with a link to view it and pay by M-Pesa prompt, and Jay's paybill and their account number printed for anyone who'd rather pay directly.

Collecting in November

Bills were due on 10 November. The money came in two ways.

Through the pay link. Customers who tapped the link and approved the M-Pesa prompt were recorded against their bill straight away and sent a receipt. By 30 November that came to KES 118,000.

Straight into the paybill. The rest paid from the M-Pesa menu. Every Monday, the office downloaded the paybill statement from the M-Pesa Org Portal and chose Import statement. The table below summarizes 268 rows in the direct-payment review across four imports. Pay-link receipts already recorded are excluded from this table; the five duplicate rows shown are repeats within the overlapping direct-payment downloads:

Statement payments allocated to October bills came to KES 183,700. Four customers also paid advances towards December. Those additional amounts remained as credit and are excluded from the October collection total. Any payments applied to September debts are excluded too.

This distinction matters: cash received in November is not necessarily payment for October. Reconcile the receipts and allocations separately.

Chasing what was left

On 11 November, the office opened Collections, went to Send reminders, filtered to overdue bills and ticked 96 of them. Review & send showed one reminder per account, who would be reached and what it would cost, before anything went out over SMS and WhatsApp. A second, smaller batch went on 24 November.

By 30 November:

• Collected: KES 301,700 - an 87.8% collection rate on October's bills.
• Outstanding: KES 41,800 of October's bills across 52 accounts, all in the 0-30 day bucket of Arrears aging - a few days late, not a problem yet.
• The three that were: three of those 52 also owed KES 3,200 from September, reported separately in the 31-60-day bucket. The office reviewed them under its collection terms. Two agreed repayment plans, and the third required further follow-up. Ageing alone does not authorize suspension; confirm eligibility and required notice before taking action.

What made the month work

Looking back, five things did most of the work:

1. Schedules, not invoices. Once the schedules were right, the rounds and the bills followed the work.
2. An outcome at every stop. The 24 misses were rebated before anyone complained, and the 58 "not out" lifts were billed with a timestamp behind every one.
3. Closing rounds. The office investigated incomplete records on Route C before proceeding with those bills.
4. Account numbers on every bill. 241 of the 268 direct-payment review rows had proposed matches for confirmation.
5. Small, early reminders. Follow-up began on the 11th. The ageing bucket follows the due date and reporting date, not whether a reminder was sent.

This example explains the workflow, not a measured time saving. Actual effort depends on account volume, stop records and payment references. If you want to see your own rounds run this way, start with Waste Billing - or read how to start a collection business if you're not there yet.