OWENSVILLE — Owensville has officially rolled out a new online payment system that residents and companies can use to pay utility bills as well as any other charge from the city. It should be easier for customers to use and will save time for City Hall staff on some of the work they would have had to do differently in the past.

Any type of bill that the city would need to write an invoice for can be paid online through the new system. It should especially benefit those who live farther away, or others such as out-of-town contractors who no longer have to go to City Hall or call in during business hours to pay one bill.

Residents can access the portal through the city website and pay an invoice just by typing the account number from the bill into the system. But if they want to set up auto-pay, paperless billing or to have access to data regarding their utility usage, they will need to set up an account.

There is still a fee for online payments, but it has changed slightly. It is 50 cents for each transaction and 2.95 percent of the total bill. But for residents paying their utility bills, the total has decreased based on the fees, according to Sarah Nadler and Christine Thompson from the city’s accounts receivable department. If someone would like to avoid the extra charge, they can still bring a check or cash to City Hall to bypass online processing fees.

The system is live right now, but staff are still finishing up some training on the finer elements of its use and catching up on inputting bills into the system, which will be largely automated once they are done populating the invoices that will be due on Nov. 15. There is somewhat of a learning curve while working with new software, Thompson said.

With the old system, everything was separated. Even if there was a single contractor paying for a business license and a building permit, everything would have been dealt with independently. Now, a simple search by City Hall staff of the business name will bring up all the outstanding and past invoices for a customer, regardless of what the invoice was for. So, it will be easier for everyone to keep up on what has and hasn’t been paid yet.

Customers can choose in the system how they would like to be informed of new invoices. The old system often failed to send out text message updates, but staff now expect customers to receive those messages promptly and consistently.

They also expect the interface to be much more user-friendly. Staff can still print out an invoice and mail it to the customer if needed, but sending notifications automatically by email should be much more efficient and allow staff at City Hall to do other things with their time.

Those that aren’t comfortable using software can call City Hall and receive help to set up auto-pay if they would like. Residents can still pay by mail or call in and give them a card number to charge, and it will be easy to cancel auto-pay within the interface, or by request over the phone, if needed.