Recouping costs with bill validation

When it comes to keeping costs down, there are many cost reduction actions that businesses may consider, however, bill validation is often overlooked and can be an effective way of identifying and reclaiming any overpayments. Here we look at how you can recoup costs with bill validation and how it could save you thousands.

What is bill validation?

Bill validation is the process of analysing and cross-checking energy and utility bills, making sure you’re charged the correct amount for how much is being used. The bill validation process can be time consuming, businesses may not have the internal resource to dedicate, meaning potential savings could be lost.

How can bill validation save you thousands?

When reviewing utility bills, recovering errors can have a huge impact in saving your business money. With an accurate bill validation service, you can identify and assess any incorrect billing you receive from your supplier, then query these to recover the funds. These refunds can then give you a cash injection to re-invest into your business for your net zero and sustainability efforts.

The importance of an effective EMS for bill validation

An effective energy management software (EMS) provides utility bill tracking and real time metering which is easy to install and start using. Various public and private sector organisations have resorted in securing an EMS to save time. Below is an example of how our EMS system has helped our client.

SystemsLink energy management software at Durham County Council

Durham County Council has over 800 buildings including offices, leisure centres, libraries, and depots. For each one it manages electricity, gas, and water consumption, at a large annual cost. The council estimated that up to 10% of total energy and water costs could be saved if this data could be managed well. However, the council at this time were using a very complex and inflexible set of paper bills and excel spreadsheets to manage consumption data, so it was not able to manage its consumption well.

The decision was then later taken to invest in a new energy management software at SystemsLink. The software can be used across multiple utilities accounts, and has an interactive web portal function, enabling building users to see how much energy they are using and compare previous consumption.

This software saved Durham County Council money and helped it meet its carbon reduction targets. Now, staff both in the energy team and in building management have data at their fingertips to use and act on promptly.

Benefits of bill validation

There are many benefits to instructing an expert energy consultancy to conduct a bill validation and making sure you are billed correctly and charged for the consumption that you are using. Benefits of bill validation also include:

• Increased level of visibility and insight into changing bills
• Improves accuracy by eliminating manual data entry errors
• Better management of supplier operations
• Maximises efficiency and allows other areas to be focused on
• Provides better insights for business planning and future goals

Unlock your bill validation savings

There are several tools that can help aid your businesses bill validation methods. Our extensive validation library, which can perform over 100 separate validation checks that can be grouped into three categories:

1. Firstly, we compare the consumption on the invoices versus any meter data source, versus the previous month, and same month in the previous year.
2. Secondly, we look at the supplier contracts and assess these against the bills given, these are then uploaded into the software, so they are all in one place.
3. Finally, we will then compare other industry charges to analyse any differences.

By using half hourly data recorded in your businesses Energy Management Software (EMS), you can compare this to what you are being billed for on your invoice. If any errors are identified, our query management system can automatically log data through an inbuilt communication log, saving you time and easing administrative burdens. It will then automatically email this information directly to necessary team members as well as set reminders. This process can help to resolve any overpayment issues you may have.

Often the most challenging part of the bill validation process is the time it takes to manage queries from beginning to end with any suppliers or third parties. SystemsLink’s Bureau Service helps to free up your time and allow you to focus on your business. This service reduces the stress of administrative processes, by using an efficient and reliable software.

Work alongside a trusted expert