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Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program Division 10 Service 415 Program 415 Chapters 05 - 65 North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services

Some of the larger utility companies have elected to transmit bills for their LIHEAP customers by electronic file. Each local office of the company submits billing information to the company's central computer, and the bills for all the company's LIHEAP customers statewide are then transmitted to the State computer once per week via electronic file.

Each local office of the utilities will continue to receive all the documents identified in Step 4, but they will no longer need to submit the billing information by hand for current bills. Montana Dakota Utilities and Ottertail are not able, however, to submit back bills via electronic file and will have to manually submit back bills with the "Request for Payment" printout.

Xcel Energy will send an electronic file from the Minneapolis office. Local Xcel Energy offices will continue to receive their check and all other documents identified in step 4 including a printed copy of the Remittance Advice. Xcel Energy will have the capability to use the computerized billing for current and back bills.

Step 4: One check will be issued for all the vendor's customers for whom he is receiving payments, and a "Remittance Advice" will break down the amounts that are to be credited to each customer's account. At the same time, the vendor will receive from the State Office a new "Request for Payment" showing all LIHEAP-approved customers on file up to the date the report is printed. In this way, newly approved applicants will be added to the "Request for Payment" so the vendor can submit bills for new LIHEAP customers.

Each vendor will also receive with the check an electronically produced printout of bills submitted which were rejected by the computer for payment. This "Rejection List" will tell the vendor why the bills were rejected. There will continue to be some rejected bills which cannot be identified by this electronic system, and these will be handled manually by the State Office staff. The manually generated rejection notices will NOT be mailed with the check, however, but will be mailed separately within a week following the computer run.