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In my country, China, people pay electricity and water bills monthly.

I'm writing some code (I'm talking about programming, but it doesn't matter if you know nothing about programming) about that, so I created two variables named WaterBill and ElectricityBill for the corresponding bills.

Now, I want to create a variable which can denote WaterBill or ElectricityBill both.

I know I could name it Bill (both WaterBill and ElectricityBill are bills, I know), but I wonder, is there a word which denotes the bill you receive on a regular time schedule -- especially for water bill or electricity bill --precisely?

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    Interestingly, in at least some parts of Canada, they say "hydro" to refer to the electrical utilities, so their electricity bill is already called a "hydro bill" (I think water usage is on a separate bill, though, so that's not an answer per se).
    – Paul
    Jan 15, 2016 at 4:14

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You can say "a utility bill" that's used in both American and British English.

Among many senses, the word utility also means a public commodity or service such as electricity, water, telephone, etc.

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Your problem is that traditionally water and electricity are supplied by two different utilities and not bundled together.

For example, when gas and electricity are supplied by the same company and the billing is combined, this might be refered to as a power bill.

Water and trash removal may be combined into a services bill (depending on specific situations).

Utility bill is more encompassing than your specific request.

Since you are asking about a variable name, you could use power_elec_bill which is descriptive (a good thing for variable names), or possibly powater if you want to combine power and water.

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    Thanks for your advice. I think UtilityBill will be good. I think powater_bill is confusing.
    – Sayakiss
    Jan 13, 2016 at 5:37
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    After having to work with code full of variable names like 'crunt' and 'blid', I would definitely appreciate finding a variable called UtilityBill rather than trying to guess what you meant by powater.
    – ssav
    Jan 13, 2016 at 10:23
  • powater would fail any code review I was a part of. Water, electricity, and gas bills would all be of the utility bill type.
    – Rob K
    Mar 22, 2017 at 17:14

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