Account Contacts

A Billing system should support Contacts who have multiple Accounts, both at the same time (ownership of multiple properties) and over time (as a person buys and sells properties as their place of residence). Each Contact may have multiple addresses – work, home, mailing – each with their own attributes. The contact's primary information (date of birth, driver's licence) does not change and so forms part of the central record, but address information is more variable over time and should be part of a series of effective-dated sub-records, linked to the central or main record.

It is important that a record is kept on each Account for Contacts other than the person(s) legally responsible for paying the Account. There may be a person practically responsible for paying the Account, such as a parent, child or legal guardian, who would also receive a copy of the Bill at their own address. Generally this is known as “third-party billing”. As circumstances vary between cities or utilities, the ideal Billing system should not be prescriptive as to classifying such people; it should support user-definable categories.

From Account Contacts Fact Sheet which can be found at Public Sector Billing.