WillMax Capital Management boosts utility cost recovery with Zego Utility
About WillMax Capital Management
WillMax Capital Management is a multifamily property management company with approximately 3,000 units located primarily in Texas, with additional assets in Colorado. Known for long employee tenure and a strong resident focus, WillMax prioritizes fast maintenance turnaround, proactive communication, and providing comfortable homes for their tenants.
Their relationship with Zego began more than a decade ago with digital payments, and has grown to include convergent resident utility billing and submetered utilities for new developments.
- Zego customer: Since 2012
- Portfolio: Multifamily
- Units: Approx. 3,000
- Zego products: Zego Pay, Zego Utility (Resident Billing, Convergent Billing, Submetered Billing)
- Accounting software: Rent Manager
Key highlights
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Seamless Rent Manager integration that reduces errors and manual work
Zego’s integration with Rent Manager streamlines check reconciliation, refunds, and convergent billing while eliminating the manual cleanup WillMax faced with other providers.
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Increasing utility cost recovery with submetered billing
By moving to Zego Utility, WillMax increased its utility recoupment percentages across their portfolio, with one flagship community approaching full recovery on water and 95% recoupment on gas.
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Reclaiming a full week of staff time every billing cycle
Before Zego Utility, Brian personally spent a week each cycle building statements in spreadsheets and manually stuffing and mailing thousands of bills. Today, Zego automates the process, freeing him to focus on higher value initiatives.
The challenge
As a long time Rent Manager user, WillMax initially managed utilities entirely in house while using a separate provider for payments. Utility billing for the whole portfolio fell on Brian, who built and maintained complex spreadsheets to calculate resident charges each month.
The process consumed about a week of his time per cycle and relied heavily on manual checks to avoid costly mistakes. Despite the effort, WillMax still faced capped recovery rates and exposure to regulatory and calculation errors.
- Utility billing required a full week of manual spreadsheet work and mailing thousands of paper statements each month.
- Heavy reliance on manual calculations and triple checking increased the risk of human error and billing disputes.
- Recovery on water, sewer, and gas was limited, while regulatory complexity (including PUC rules and vacant handling) created additional risk.
The solution
WillMax expanded its Zego Pay relationship to include Zego Utility, moving from manual spreadsheets to automated, convergent utility billing integrated with Rent Manager.
Zego now calculates utility charges, generates resident statements, and syncs them into Rent Manager so residents can view and pay through Tenant Web Access.
At key communities, WillMax also implemented submetered billing through Zego, and all new developments are planned to launch with Zego’s submetered solution. The implementation itself was straightforward, relying on data Brian could easily export from Rent Manager and configure with the Zego team.
The results
With Zego Utility fully integrated into Rent Manager, WillMax has transformed a labor intensive, error prone utility workflow into a reliable, high recovery billing engine.
Brian has reclaimed roughly a full week of work each billing cycle, while accounting and site teams benefit from automation, cleaner data, and far fewer manual fixes.
Submetered billing and automated calculations have significantly improved utility cost recovery, and Zego’s support and documentation make it easier to respond to regulators and keep operations running smoothly.
With an average utility spend of roughly $150 per unit per month, a 3,000-unit portfolio like WillMax’s pays approximately $5.4 million annually for utilities.
Every 10 percent improvement in utility cost recovery is worth more than $540,000 a year. By increasing recovery from ~75 percent to 80–85 percent, Zego Utility represents hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual value for the WillMax portfolio.
Chat with a Zego expert
Interested in how Zego Utility could help your team boost utility recovery, uncover leaks and simplify operations? Book time with a member of our Zego team today to learn how our collection of tools maximizes recoupment.
