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Honeywell 200 Public Utility Computer

Published 26 November 2016

Honeywell 200 Computer

Dive into the Honeywell 200's world, where it empowered Public Utilities to transform their customer accounting systems. This brochure brilliantly demystifies the fusion of computer tech with accounting, offering clarity on its real-world impact. Picture this: Los Angeles county officials feeding stacks of punch cards into this behemoth, each card a key to updating accounts in an era when computers began to redefine efficiency. It's a nostalgic journey through the practical magic of early data processing that reshaped how utilities interacted with their customer data.

Public Utility Customer Accounting on the Honeywell 200

The Customer Application

Picture this: A bustling public utility, serving around 150,000 customers, deftly managing an intricate dance of data with the Honeywell 200 at the helm. This powerhouse computer system orchestrates a symphony of bi-monthly billing notices, ensuring each customer receives an accurate statement of their utility usage. But it doesn't stop there. Daily, the Honeywell 200 processes a whirlwind of activities—3,750 cash payments, 4,000 meter readings, and a thousand updates to customer records. It's the nerve center for credit and collections, a hub for customer service inquiries, and a brain trust that churns out vital statistical analyses for revenue and billing trends. For management, it's like having an eagle-eye view of the operation, all thanks to the computing prowess of the Honeywell 200. This isn't just accounting; it's a full-scale, data-driven strategy to keep the utility's lifeblood flowing smoothly.

THE COMPUTER—A Honeywell 200 including five magnetic tape units, a high-speed printer, a card reader-punch and associated units.

Memory: 24 Kilobytes
Execution Rate: 25,000 instructions per second
Simultaneity: Three peripheral operations during computation
Tape Transfer Rate: 31,980 characters per second
Printer speed: 900-1260 lines per minute
Card reader speed: 800 cards per minute
Card punch speed: 250 cards per minute
Programming Aids: Honeywell Easycoder, which includes an assembly program, a report generator, a sorting program, input-output routines and a tape-handling routine.

Daily Processing

Customer Billing

In operation, the H-200 updates the master record file, calculates and prints bi-monthly bills, determines credit classifications and proves the account receivable balances. In addition, the H-200 produces other major items such as open balance registers, customer history registers, meter investigations, missed reading records, credit notices, control totals, delinquent balances, statistical data, daily and monthly revenue reports, daily block total, bi-monthly and annual bill analysis, and promotional material address labels for new customers.

Billing Input

A regular, bi-monthly punched card bill is prepared at the time of the scheduled bi-monthly meter reading, along with a complete listing of customer financial status. (The bill is printed "two-up".) Input consists of cash remittances, meter reading sheets and customer record changes.

Cash remittances contain the mailing address, billing data (including, rate account number, net amount due, time, power used, meter reading), and the unit record containing account number, net amount due, and time. The unit record is retained in the district office where the bill is remitted as a written record and an aid in answering future customer inquiries.

The remitted data is read into computer memory storage for subsequent editing, sorting and merging into the master files for the updating run.

Meter reading sheets are prepared by the H-200 system four days before scheduled readings. Each sheet contains estimated high and low readings for each meter, and sections for indicating actual readings if higher or lower than estimated, plus sections for indicating use, non-use, and condition of the meter.

Customer record change forms provide for approximately 50 possible contingencies, but generally consist of meter service orders, financial adjustments and mailing changes. As these changes are received at the district office, they are classified; any change affecting the customer history or unit record are manually updated, and then forwarded also to headquarters for updating of the master files.

Input Editing

At the computer center, meter reading sheets and customer record changes are manually keypunched and verified. The cash stubs, or bills, are proven against cash transmittal slips prepared by the district offices. A computer run edits all cash remittances into a predetermined tape format, rechecks all batch totals and lists on the printer any out-of-balance batch. A sort routine then sequences all payments into district order and stores them on magnetic tape for eventual listing. (A listing of all accepted payments is printed for daily forwarding to the district offices.) All payments are sorted by the H-200 on tape into a route/ district order for posting to the master file.

The meter reading sheets are keypunched, then edited by the computer into a tape format. Readings are sorted on tape into route/district order; rejected or missed readings are estimated whenever possible.

The same procedure is followed for the customer record changes. In the final tape sort, transaction type (posting priority number) is added to the procedure.

Updating Run

The updating run posts the daily transactions to the master file, creating an updated master file plus credit notice reports and a report file. The report file - used to produce updated customer history register data - consists of the open balance register, delinquent balance report, missed reading reports, customer change register, meter investigation orders, deposit and credit refund lists, refolioed accounts, credit classifications and mailing labels for new accounts

Billing Run

The H-200 billing calculation routine processes - in addition to the regular bill&mdashlaverage, estimated, split, pro-rated, suspended, vacation, prefigured, permanent unmetered, final and off-cycle, and budget house heat bills.

During the single pass of the tape files, two phases of the billing calculation occur. The first phase consists of the dial repeat analysis and hi-lo check; investigation orders are issued when required.

The second phase of the billing run produces three types of output: master file data; miscellaneous reports and statistical data; and bill data. The bill data is dispersed into regular final off-cycle and special-handling bills; register data is dispersed into final, off-cycle and customer history reports. The program then sorts the final, off-cycle and special-handling bills according to district office to facilitate manual handling after printing. All bills are then edited for two-up printing.

Output

The output provides information for three basic requirements: customer inquiries; accounts receivable media; and operating reports.

Customer inquiries are answered from four sources: daily cash listings, open balance registers, customer history registers and unit records. The daily cash listings are produced from the input editing runs. The open balance registers, produced from the report file generated during the file updating run, contain all district office accounts not paid by the due date. The data from the file update run and the billing run are merged to produce the customer history register.

The financial unit records, containing current customer billing information, all customer payment and credits received since the last bill was issued, customer credit classification etc., are produced during the single printing pass through the H-200 high-speed printer that produces the bills. The records are used in district offices for reference on customer financial inquiries.

Accounts receivable media consists of bills, produced during the bill calculation run; and credit notices, produced during the file update run. The credit notices, sorted and edited during the update run, consist of final bill follow-up, shut-off, collector and reminder notices.

Operating reports consist of miscellaneous card reports, special unit records, missed reading list, meter investigation list, deposit listing, and mailing labels. They are all produced during either the file update or the billing runs. The pertinent data is sorted into district sequence and report type, edited and then printed.

References

  1. Honeywell 200, computer sales brochure, Archive.org
  2. Honeywell 200, Wikipedia
Honeywell 200 Computer outline

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