For cities, rural water districts and sanitary districts

Know what your water, sewer and garbage rates need to be — and why.

Upload your audits and budget. RateWorks builds the full-cost revenue requirement for each utility fund, tests it against your loan covenants and reserves, and turns it into a rate schedule and a board report. Updated whenever you need it, for a fraction of the cost of an engineering rate study.

Full-costEPA / RCAP / AWWA method
Every fundwater, sewer, garbage, storm
Reviewedby a municipal advisor

Quick rate check Free · no email needed

A screening number for one fund. The portal does the real work.

$
$
$
$
revenue at today's rates
rough full-cost requirement
Requirement = O&M + debt × 1.2 coverage + 10% for reserves and replacement.
How it works

Four steps from your audit to adopted rates

1

Upload what you have

Three to five years of audits, this year's budget, your rate ordinance and loan agreements. PDFs are fine.

2

Confirm what we read

RateWorks maps every number to the model and shows you where it came from. You accept or correct before anything is calculated.

3

See the fund's health

Coverage, days of cash, what the general fund has been covering, and the five-year requirement with each cost laid out.

4

Adopt with confidence

A phased rate schedule inside the increase your council will accept, sample bills, and a plain-language board report with the ordinance exhibit.

Every subscriber's first model is reviewed by AMKO Advisors before it goes to a council. You are not alone with a spreadsheet.

What it covers

One model per fund, one picture of the whole utility

Water

Wells, treatment or purchased water; base charge by meter size; uniform, block or seasonal rates.

Sewer

Billed on water use or winter average; high-strength surcharges; lagoon and plant capital.

Garbage & solid waste

Contract hauler pass-through, container fees, landfill and transfer costs.

Debt covenants

USDA, SRF and revenue bond coverage tests, debt service reserves and short-lived asset reserves, every forecast year.

New borrowing

Drop in a proposed SRF or USDA loan and see the rate it takes to support it — before you apply.

Shared costs

Clerk, shop, vehicles, audit and council costs allocated across funds so no fund quietly subsidizes another.

Ask your system

Questions answered from your own documents and model

Every page of the portal has a panel that knows your audits, your loan agreements and your current model. Ask it what a number means, what a covenant requires, or what a scenario would do. It shows its sources and never changes adopted numbers on its own.

  • “Why does the requirement jump in 2028?”
  • “What does our USDA covenant actually require?”
  • “What would a $1.5M SRF loan at 2% do to the average bill?”
  • “Draft the notice to customers for the 2027 increase.”
Why is the sewer fund short even though we raised rates last year?
Two reasons. Lagoon repairs ran $41,000 over budget in FY2025 (audit p. 34), and the fund has been carrying $0 of shared clerk and shop costs while water carries all of it. Reallocating those on the same basis adds about $18,000 a year to sewer. Last year's 6% increase covered inflation, not either of these.Sources: FY2025 audit, Statement of Revenues (p. 34); shared-cost allocation, model v3
What if we phase the lagoon project over two years?
Splitting the $600,000 project across 2027 and 2028 lowers the 2027 increase from 14% to 9% and keeps coverage above 1.10x in both years. Saved as scenario “Lagoon, two phases” — not adopted until you choose it.Scenario run on model v3 · engine result, not an estimate
Pricing

Priced for systems that can't spend $20,000 on a rate study

Illustrative tiers for review — final pricing to be set.

Small system
$2,400 / year

Under 1,000 connections

  • All utility funds
  • Unlimited model updates
  • Board report and rate exhibit
  • AMKO review of the first run each year
Request access
Mid-size system
$4,800 / year

1,000 – 5,000 connections

  • Everything in Small
  • Multiple users and read-only council links
  • Scenario library and version history
  • Priority AMKO review
Request access
Larger system
$9,000 / year

5,000 – 15,000 connections

  • Everything in Mid-size
  • Customer-class cost-of-service allocation
  • Benchmarking against peer systems
  • Annual presentation to the council
Request access

Add-ons: a signed AMKO Advisors rate memo for adoption, and rate analysis tied to a bond or SRF financing, delivered under AMKO's municipal advisor registration.

Questions

What clerks and auditors ask us

What do we need to get started?

Your last three audits, this year's budget, the current rate ordinance, loan agreements, and an annual usage report from your billing system. A first result usually takes one sitting.

Our audit lumps water and sewer together. Is that a problem?

It is common. RateWorks flags it, asks a few questions to split the funds, and shows you the split for confirmation. The model never runs on a guess.

How is this different from the free tools online?

Free spreadsheets do the arithmetic and leave you alone with it. RateWorks reads your documents, tests your actual loan covenants, keeps the model current every year, and puts a municipal advisor's review behind the number.

Is this municipal advice?

The portal is software and general information. When an analysis is tied to a bond issue or SRF loan, AMKO Advisors delivers it as municipal advisor work with the usual documentation. The FAQ and terms spell out the line.

Who can see our documents?

Only users your organization invites and AMKO reviewers you authorize. Documents are encrypted, never used to train anything, and deleted on request.

Our SRF or USDA loan requires a rate study. Does this count?

Most lenders accept a full-cost rate analysis prepared by a qualified advisor. The AMKO-reviewed report is written to meet those requirements; tell us the lender and we will confirm.

Request access

Tell us about your system

We'll send an access code and a short checklist of documents to upload.

Prototype page — nothing is sent.