Tools

Financial Sustainability Tools

Frequently Used Tools

Financial Health Checkup For Water Utilities
This tool examines the financial health of a utility. A user provides financial values from audits, and the tool calculates key financial indicators to show utility financial status over 5 years.

Plan-To-Pay: Scenarios To Fund Your Capital Improvement Plan
The plan-to-pay tool prompts utilities to plan out capital improvements and track payback periods over 20 years. Model inputs can include grants and loans, but utilities should be aware that they will own any asset and will need to maintain and replace it in the future.

Water And Wastewater Rates Analysis Model
A do-it-yourself, simplified financial model to help utilities set rates.

Water And Wastewater Residential Rates Affordability Assessment
The affordability assessment tool displays data by census block to show the impact of rates on all customers, on homeowners only, and on the lowest-income customers.

Additional Tools and Dashboards

Beaver Lake Revenueshed Tool
This tool visualizes different ways revenue could be generated for watershed protection in the Beaver Lake Watershed. The report introduces a revenueshed for Beaver Lake Watershed. A revenueshed is a geographic area in which revenue is generated for an environmental service, in this case watershed management.

Bill Payment Assistance Program Cost Estimation For Water Utilities
This tool is a guide for utility staff wanting to estimate the cost of implementing a program to assist low-income residential customers in paying their bills. It provides a picture of the income distribution of households in the utility service areas and allows the utility to choose from different eligibility and program designs

COVID-19 Financial Resilience Dashboard
This tool lets utilities enter their financial information and anticipated revenue losses to see how long they can supplement revenue losses with unrestricted cash.

COVID-19 Water Utility Revenue Impact Estimator
This tool allows users to enter data that affect water and wastewater revenues and expenses, including rates of delinquencies and water use changes, to estimate net loss (or change) of revenue under COVID-19 pandemic working conditions over a two year period.

Electricity Baseline Builder For Water Utilities
This tool allows you to see how much electricity your water system is currently using and track how much you save, or have already saved, with new energy efficiency projects.

Financing Wetland And Water Quality Improvements Tool
This revenue tool uses up to 10 separate governments, non-profits, or other entities looking to partner together on water quality projects to estimate how much money they can raise from various sources.

Loan Analysis Tool
The loan analysis tool helps utilities analyze the financial outcome of using a loan for a project. As inputs, the model needs a loan amount, period, interest rate, and the number of users (or connections). The output of the model is the annual cost for each user, for either declining or equal payments.

Michigan Affordability Criteria Tool For State Revolving Fund Program (FLOW)
This tool uses socioeconomic indicators from the US Census’ American Community Survey (ACS), population projections from the Michigan Bureau of Labor Market Information and Strategic Initiatives, and relies on the user to input the system’s rates to imagine what using various affordability criteria could look like for Michigan’s SRF programs.

Revolving Fund Model
The revolving fund model helps systems plan upgrades or capital improvement projects. The tool helps utilities when providing loans to individual system users, giving your users an advantageous low rate (SRF Loan). The tool also allows for the mixing of different funding sources.

Viable Utility Tool
The Viable Utility Program is a program of the Division of Water Infrastructure that helps promote utility viability in North Carolina, including some funding. The Viable Utility Reserve tool shows which utilities were marked distressed and not distressed and summarizes financial metrics for 2017-2021.

Water Utility Revenue Risk Assessment Tool
The water utility revenue risk assessment tools helps utilities and technical assistance providers to quickly determine the proportion of residential revenues from water sales that may be at risk of loss when residential customers change demand patterns.

What is the Value of an SRF Loan? Subsidized Loan Calculator
The subsidized loan calculator demonstrates what cost savings an SRF loan at 1/2 market rate gives over full market rate.