Overcharging on a commercial utility bill is more common than you might think. There are many reasons why an overcharge may occur on a gas, electricity or water bill.
From the obvious water leak to an undetected error in the account number, you can see from the chart below, the issues that our energy bureau came across on behalf of our customers in 2011.
The easiest way to check a high volume of commercial utility bills, particularly if you have multiple sites, including large buildings with multiple meters is in paperless format or EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). EDI is computer-to-computer communication of commercial utility bills which allows automatic electronic processing without manual inputting. EDI is the ultimate solution for paperless trading and effective control of utility consumption and costs.
At TEAM the Energy Bureau department uses the Sigma Energy Management software to identify potential billing errors on behalf of our clients. Data validators allow for limits to be set that flag up any individual bills which will need investigating. Whether recording monthly or quarterly utility bills, the bill validation rules can be set up and adapted by the user. On average we process 21,500 EDI bills per month, without the bulk bill checker it would take much longer.
Checking your utility bills could result in you saving unnecessarily large costs, the validation rules that can be applied in the Bulk Bill Checker software assist the user in finding supplier mistakes. They will also highlight where invoices are missing within your database, meaning that missing bills are easily identified automatically and can be managed with your supplier.
The Bulk Bill Checker is available as a software package or used on behalf of customers who subscribe to TEAM’s utility bill validation and cost recovery service. Hear what our customer Allan Jones from Torfaen County Council has to say about the TEAM Bulk Bill Checker click here.