Managing all your utility bills online

GETITKEEPIT.COM, a new website for managing people’s utility bills, has signed commercial agreements with Vodafone and Oxigen that will keep the service free for consumers.

The site lets people store and manage their bills from a range of service providers in a single location. Currently it handles bills from 12 companies including Airtricity, Bord Gáis, ESB, Eircom, Oxigen and UPC, as well as all four mobile phone networks.

Getitkeepit.com doesn’t need commercial agreements with providers to be able to provide its service. The deals with Vodafone and Oxigen differ because they will give the site a share in the money that those providers save on printing and postage by switching their customers to paperless billing.

Chief executive Alan Coleman said the agreements would allow the service to remain free for users. The company hopes to have 40,000 subscribers by the end of the year.

Paperless billing is still in its infancy in Ireland, partly because regulations mean many providers can’t compel their customers to adopt it. Vodafone has more than 2.15 million customers in Ireland but fewer than 2 per cent are thought to use paperless billing.

“There’s a stark dichotomy between us doing so much online – banking, shopping and socialising – and yet we aren’t doing this,” Mr Coleman said.

Having all bills in one location allows consumers to analyse their spending patterns more closely. The site displays graphs comparing the bill costs to the same time a year ago. A monthly forecast feature to be added soon will show people estimates of how much their next bill is likely to cost. Mr Coleman said the data was also valuable to service providers as it could be used to identify trends over time.

Future plans for the site include a live feature to calculate a person’s carbon footprint based on their energy consumption.

The company employs five people and intends to take on a further three or five staff by the end of the year. It is closing a €400,000 funding round from Enterprise Ireland and private investors, ahead of a UK launch this summer.