Disconnection and reconnection is the part of credit control where a utility cuts off supply to an account that has not paid, and restores it once the customer pays or agrees a plan. Utilities and the contractors who run this work for them often call it DCRC. It applies to electricity and water.
It looks simple: send a notice, cut the supply, reconnect on payment. In practice it is thousands of small visits, and most of the cost and most of the complaints come from visits made on out-of-date information.
The Usual Steps
Rules differ between utilities and regulators, but most processes follow the same path.
- Pick the overdue accounts. Accounts past their due date are listed from the billing system, sorted by amount owed or by area.
- Deliver a notice. The customer is told that supply will be cut if the balance is not paid by a date. The delivery is recorded, ideally with a photo and the place and time.
- Check the balance again. The customer may have paid since the list was made. Only accounts that still owe go forward.
- Disconnect. A crew cuts the supply, at the meter, the fuse, the feeder or the pole depending on the installation, and records what was done.
- Reconnect on payment. When the payment arrives, a reconnection request goes to a crew, with a time limit to restore supply.
- Check afterwards. A later visit confirms the supply is still off, because some customers reconnect themselves.
Where the Process Goes Wrong
- Working from yesterday's list. A crew cuts off a customer who paid the night before, and the complaint arrives before the crew is back.
- Slow reconnection. Payment is made at noon and the request reaches a crew by phone the next morning. Many utilities set a reconnection time limit, and a manual process misses it.
- Illegal reconnection. Supply is quietly restored, and nobody visits to find out.
- Accounts in the wrong place. A customer on a payment plan, or one that is already being called by the call centre, still gets a disconnection task.
- No proof. A dispute about a notice or a visit has nothing to settle it: no photo, no time, no location.
- Reports built by hand. How much was collected after each notice is worked out at month end from several sheets.
What to Ask of Any System You Use
- Does it check the balance before each step, not once in the morning?
- Can a crew see paid or unpaid on site, before acting?
- Is every visit recorded with photos, GPS and an outcome?
- Does a payment raise the reconnection task by itself, and does the crew see how much time is left?
- Does it keep accounts on payment plans and protected accounts out of the cycle?
- Does it send a crew back to check that disconnected supply is still off?
- Does it link to your billing system, or does someone retype balances?
How Fieldmaster Approaches It
Fieldmaster builds this as one app for the utility or its contractor. Overdue accounts come in from the billing system or from Excel, and your rules decide what happens to each. A delivered notice sends an SMS and schedules a balance check. A disconnection task is raised only if the balance is still unpaid at the check, and tasks that become paid are withdrawn overnight. Crews record each visit with photos and GPS, and a follow-up visit records whether the supply was illegally reconnected, with a reason code.
Reconnection requests come from an office screen, a customer-service form, a monitored mailbox or the billing system. The task goes to the crew that disconnected or the nearest crew on shift, with a countdown against your time limit, and supervisors get a list of reconnections still open. Customers who agree a plan are kept out of the normal cycle; see how that works on our utility installment plans page.
The full picture is on our utility revenue protection page, and the field side of tampering is in our guide to meter tampering. To talk about your own process, contact us.
