Energy & UtilitiesVCG Edition

One system for theentire operation.

We built a full NetSuite operating environment for rural energy cooperatives. Work orders, field service dispatch, asset lifecycle tracking, regulatory billing, and member management. No middleware. No bolt-on platforms.

EQUS, Canada's largest member-owned electrical utility, runs their operations on the system we built.

The Problem

Utilities don't fit ERP templates. Most partners don't know that yet.

A rural energy cooperative isn't a wholesale distributor with a different logo. You have members, not customers. You bill regulated rates, not negotiated prices. Your field crews need dispatch and asset tracking, not pick-pack-ship. And your regulator wants reports that no standard NetSuite chart of accounts will produce.

We've watched cooperatives try to run their operations on a vanilla NetSuite install with a couple of customizations bolted on. It works for about three months. Then the first regulatory filing comes due, or a crew needs to log time against a pole replacement, and the system has no idea what they're talking about.

Billing model mismatch
NetSuite's standard billing assumes you're invoicing for goods sold. Utility billing runs on metered consumption, demand charges, rate riders, and regulatory tariffs.
No asset lifecycle tracking
Poles, transformers, meters, substations. Each one has an install date, maintenance history, depreciation schedule, and replacement cost. Standard NetSuite treats them all as fixed assets with a purchase date.
Field service gap
Work orders that dispatch crews to GPS coordinates, track parts used on-site, log labor hours by task type, and close back into the GL. None of that exists out of the box.
Member vs. customer
Co-op members own shares, vote on the board, receive patronage allocations, and carry a capital account balance. The standard customer record doesn't capture any of it.
Regulatory reporting
Your regulator needs filings in formats that don't align with GAAP chart structures. Building those reports as an afterthought creates manual work every quarter.
0K+
Members served by the co-op system we built
0
Municipal districts covered by the service area
0
Office locations running on one NetSuite instance
0
External platforms needed for daily operations
Capabilities

What we built inside NetSuite

Every module below runs natively in NetSuite. No third-party platforms syncing overnight. No data living in two places. One system, one close.

Work Orders
Work Order & Field Service
Custom work order records that track the full lifecycle: request intake, crew assignment, dispatch with GPS coordinates, parts consumed, labor hours by task type, supervisor sign-off, and GL posting. Crews close out jobs on-site. The back office sees cost in real time.
Integrated with asset records so every job links to the pole, transformer, or meter it touched.
Billing
Regulatory & Utility Billing
Rate structures built for how utilities actually bill. Metered consumption tiers, demand charges, rate riders, local access fees, and regulatory surcharges. Rate changes get applied across the member base without rebuilding the pricing model. Billing runs generate member statements that match the regulator's format.
Supports time-of-use rates, seasonal adjustments, and retroactive rate corrections.
Assets
Asset Lifecycle Management
Every physical asset in the distribution network gets a record: install date, location, maintenance history, condition grade, depreciation schedule, and replacement cost estimate. When a crew replaces a transformer, the old asset retires and the new one activates in the same transaction.
Condition-based maintenance scheduling tied to inspection records.
Members
Member & Co-op Management
Co-op members aren't customers. They carry share capital, vote at AGMs, and receive patronage allocations. We built custom records for membership applications, share registers, capital account tracking, and patronage distribution calculations. The member portal shows their account, consumption history, and capital balance.
Patronage allocation engine with board-approved distribution rules.
Integration
Metering & SCADA Integration
Consumption data from smart meters and AMI infrastructure feeds directly into NetSuite billing. No CSV uploads. No overnight batch jobs that break on holidays. Meter reads validate against historical baselines to flag anomalies before they become billing disputes.
Supports interval data, demand readings, and microgeneration net metering.
Reporting
Regulatory & Board Reporting
Regulatory filings, board packages, and operational dashboards built on saved searches and SuiteAnalytics. The COA maps to both GAAP reporting and the regulatory filing structure so you're not maintaining two sets of numbers.
Includes AUC filing templates, safety compliance reports, and capital project tracking.
Construction
Capital Project Tracking
Line extension projects, substation upgrades, and grid expansion programs tracked from approval through commissioning. Budget vs. actual by project phase, contractor cost tracking, and capitalization rules that match your depreciation policy.
WIP-to-asset conversion with automated capitalization journals.

"We went from five disconnected systems to one. Our field crews, billing team, and finance department are all working in the same place for the first time."

— Operations, Rural Energy Cooperative · 12,000+ members · Alberta

Energy Edition

Not a connector. Not a module. A complete operating environment.

Most NetSuite partners will tell you they work with utilities. What that usually means is they've set up standard financials and told you to find a separate system for field service, asset management, and member billing.

We took the opposite approach. We built everything inside NetSuite because the moment you split operations into multiple systems, you create reconciliation problems that never go away. Your field data lives in one system, your billing in another, your financials in a third. Month-end becomes a data integration exercise instead of an accounting close.

The Energy Edition is the system we built for EQUS. We've since packaged the core components so other cooperatives and municipal utilities can start from a working foundation instead of a blank NetSuite instance.

What's in the Edition
Field Service
Work order lifecycle, crew dispatch, GPS routing, parts tracking, on-site close-out
Asset Management
Install, inspect, maintain, retire. Full history on every pole, transformer, and meter
Utility Billing
Consumption tiers, demand charges, rate riders, regulatory surcharges, member statements
Member Portal
Account overview, consumption history, capital balance, service requests, outage notifications
Meter Integration
AMI/smart meter data feed, validation rules, anomaly detection, net metering for microgeneration
Regulatory Reporting
AUC filing structure, safety compliance, capital project summaries, board reporting packages
Capital Projects
Line extensions, substation builds, WIP tracking, budget vs. actual, capitalization journals
How Energy Engagements Work

Start from the operations. Work backward into the system.

01
Operations Audit
We spend time with your field crews, billing team, and finance department before we touch NetSuite. How do work orders flow? What triggers a billing run? Where does data get re-entered? We need to understand your operation before we design the system.
02
System Architecture
COA design mapped to both GAAP and regulatory filing structures. Custom record types for assets, work orders, and member accounts. Integration architecture for meter data. We design the full data model and walk your team through it.
03
Build & Train
Sprint-based configuration with your team testing each module as it's built. Field crews test work order flows on actual jobs. Billing runs on test data that mirrors your real rate structures. We don't demo features. We validate workflows.
04
Go-Live & Support
Parallel billing runs, data migration, cutover support. We stay through at least one full billing cycle and one regulatory filing period. Then managed services or your team takes over.
Sound Familiar?

Things we hear from cooperatives

Our field crews track everything on paper or in a separate app. Finance doesn't see the costs until weeks later.

That's the core problem. When field data lives outside the ERP, you're always reconciling after the fact. Our work order system closes the loop in real time.

We can't bill the way our regulator requires without a bunch of manual adjustments.

Standard NetSuite billing doesn't know what a rate rider is. We build the rate structures into the billing engine so the output matches the regulatory format without manual rework.

We have five different systems and none of them talk to each other.

That's what we replaced. Financials, billing, field service, asset management, and member records in one instance. No nightly syncs. No reconciliation spreadsheets.

Every time rates change, it takes us weeks to update the system.

Rate changes should be a configuration update, not a rebuild. Our billing structure separates the rate logic from the transaction processing so changes apply across the member base.

We're still tracking assets in spreadsheets.

That works until the first capital audit. We build asset records that carry the full lifecycle: install, inspect, maintain, depreciate, replace. Linked to work orders and the GL.

Our board wants better reporting but we can't produce it from the current system.

Usually that means the COA wasn't designed with reporting in mind. We restructure the chart of accounts and build saved searches that produce board packages and regulatory filings directly.

Let's Talk

Your utility shouldn't need five systems to run one operation.

Free 30-minute assessment. We'll review your current setup, identify where the operational gaps are, and tell you honestly whether the Energy Edition is the right fit.