Best way to manage utilities

[Alberto Dante]

Hi Peter,
as I replyed to Ian, I know and I have already lots of spreadsheets to 
manage specific items, but I would have in Gnucash the global vision of 
my Finance (and I would reduce the number of the spreadsheets).
In Italy pricing of utilities is similar to US I think, however very 
complicate; but I'm not interested of this: I'd like simply to manage 
with Gnucash the overall (two-monthly) bill amount, the quantity of 
energy (kWh) and the average price unit (Euro/kWh) = bill amount / 
quantity of energy, nothing else.

I understand that you suggest/prefer spreadsheets to to this.
But I think is not harm to modify existing (double) accounts, to give to 
the users more flexibility.

Anyway, I'm only a beginner, and your opinion maybe is most important 
for the community and the developers.
Thanks for your suggestions
Alberto

> I'm on a supply charge plus fixed kWh price for my electricity. But my
> supplier also has two other plans that have tiered pricing as you
> describe (they're only economic for people whose electricity consumption
> is higher than mine). The same supplier also has time-of-day pricing for
> electricity, so it's definitely not a scheme restricted to phone
> pricing. It would get even more complicated if I was on a solar feed-in
> plan.
>
> My natural gas and water charges are also tiered by quarterly usage.
>
> I track phone & ISP costs, water usage, home energy use and home CO2
> emissions in my utilities spreadsheet. I compare my actual electricity
> costs against the cost I would pay if I had time-of-day pricing instead
> (the difference has never been more than $2.50/quarter in either
> direction). I just use an estimate based on the previous year+10% for
> utility costs in my budget/planning spreadsheet (I never liked the
> Gnucash budgeting system).
>
> Peter