Bills & Utilities

How it works

The mechanics of this kit, plainly — what runs and when, where the data lands, and what you look at.

• Bill sweep runs mondays · 7am and keeps the Bills at a glance dashboard fresh. Weekly — finds new bills in your email and flags what's coming due.
• What is captured lands in the Bills record dataset, which lives at Data/Bills Record in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Supplies and contracts dataset, which lives at Data/Bill Supplies in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Bill shares dataset, which lives at Data/Bill Shares in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• The Bills at a glance dashboard reads from the dataset and shows, at a glance: still to pay · paid vs still due · bills on record · total billed · cost over time · where it goes · supplies and contracts · how this board works.

The wiring, in one breath: Bill capture writes to Bills record · Statement match marks paid in Bills record · Bills record shown by Bills at a glance · Bills at a glance kept fresh by Bill sweep · Contracts and direct debits keeps Supplies and contracts · Bill trouble reads Supplies and contracts · Bill split keeps Bill shares · Supplies and contracts shown by Bills at a glance · Bill sweep updates Supplies and contracts.

Getting the most from it

A kit earns its place when it changes what you look at and what you say, not when it is installed. This is the rhythm that makes it pay.

• Let the Monday sweep do the reading; your job is the glance. Open Bills at a glance mid-week: Still to pay lists what is unpaid, soonest due first. Pay from the list rather than from memory, and tick each bill as you pay it.
• A bill that arrives outside email — a paper bill you photograph, a landlord's message — goes to Bursar with a sentence about what it is. Bill capture files it where the sweep would have.
• Add a bank statement to your vault once a month and say so. Statement match marks the bills it finds as paid, so "still due" stays honest without you ticking anything.
• Ask Bursar the questions a spreadsheet would make you compute — "what did we spend on energy last winter", "which supplier has gone up the most". The answers come from your own record.
• When a bill is wrong or missing, correct the record or say so in chat. Bursar learns the supplier names and the categories you use.
• Tell Bursar about each supply once: who it is with, the tariff, when the contract or fixed price ends, what leaving early costs, and the direct debit. Contracts and direct debits keeps them on Supplies and contracts and puts each contract's end, and any change of direct debit, on the shared Money calendar. The Monday sweep notices a supplier's letter that moves either.
• When a bill looks wrong, say so, and give Bursar the meter readings if the bill does not show them. Bill trouble works it through from the readings and the rates the bill prints, every step shown, and drafts a complaint for you to send if the sum is out. If you keep your readings with the Home & Upkeep Kit, it reads them from there.
• If paying is getting hard, ask what help there is. Bursar looks up the schemes official sources describe and tells you who each scheme's page says it is for. Whether you qualify is for the scheme to say, not Bursar.
• Share the household's bills with Bill split: say who is in and how you split (evenly, set shares, or by the days each person was there). Bursar works out each share, shows the sum and keeps who owes what on Bill shares until it is paid back. Nobody else signs in, and nothing is sent.
• Ask how a kind of tariff works, or what your own use would cost at the rates on a quote. Bursar explains from an official source and shows the sum. Which supplier or tariff you choose is always yours: it never recommends one.

Make it yours

Nothing here is fixed. The pieces are ordinary agents, routines, datasets and dashboards, so anything you know about shaping those applies. Retire whatever earns nothing.

Things people usually change first

Say any of these in chat, or edit them on the kit’s page in the app.

• Which suppliers count as household bills, and which are something else.
• How much notice you want before a due date.
• Whether a statement match happens automatically, or only when you ask.
• How bills are grouped on the dashboard.
• Which supplies are on Supplies and contracts, and each one's contract end and direct debit.
• How your household splits a bill, and who is in it.

Your first run

Installing starts a short setup conversation — not a form. Answer roughly, correct later.

1. Adding the Kit offers the first sweep right away: connect your email on the same screen, start it with one tap, and watch it read back through up to two years of bills and chart the board — useful before you have said a word. Prefer not to connect email? Tell Bursar who bills you instead, and the record builds by hand.
2. When that first sweep finishes, Bursar leaves a short note in your 1Presence inbox saying what it filed — how many bills, from how many suppliers — and invites two minutes together to catch anything it misread or anyone who bills you on paper.
3. From then on it raises a card only when something is due soon, overdue, or a regular bill seems to have gone missing, and once when a contract ends within 60 days or a direct debit is about to change.
4. Drop a bank statement into your vault and it quietly marks what has already been paid.

Watch the first pass, then tell it what you would have done differently — that correction teaches it more than any setup could.

The essentials

Learning, preferences and run costs work the same in every kit — so they are covered once, in the Kits guide.

Living with a Kit — the Kits guide →

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