Chargebacks overview

The Chargebacks module creates bills within UtiltityManagement to support Accounting or Facilities management.

For example, a campus may receive a single electric bill from a utility provider for the total use and cost of five dormitories. The Chargebacks module allocates the appropriate use and cost from the vendor bill to each dormitory. This can be done several ways including splitting the use and cost based on percentages, by building area, or through our advanced bill split feature.

Other names for chargebacks

• Cost allocations
• Campus distributions
• Bill splits
• Rebilling/charge-outs
• Submeter bills
• Tenant bills

UtilityManagement chargeback bills can be created as cost-only, use-only, or cost and use bills.

What is a chargeback bill?

Common reasons for chargebacks

• Cost allocation from vendor bills to multiple departments.
• Assign utility costs to specific projects, grants, and special activities.
• Create bills for tenants.
• Energy plant calculations and campus distribution tracking.
• True-up financial transactions.
• Detailed facility tracking and reporting (ENERGY STAR, Greenhouse Gas reporting).
• Mandatory energy use reporting by city or state governments.
• Track and analyze cost and use per building rather than at the campus level.

Three powerful components

Bill calculations create a new bill based on your custom calculations or from submeter readings, including SmartAnalytics meters.

Bill splits are configured on accounts and divide a bill into one or more smaller bills.  

Chargeback workflows organize groups of bill splits and calculations together into repeatable steps. This makes sure everyone is following the same process each month.

Chargebacks features

• Any meter/account can be configured for chargebacks.
• Flexible data types on submeter channels.
• Automatic rollup process for interval data (create monthly bills from hourly data).

Types of chargebacks

Bill Calculation

• Submeters (can also link to SmartAnalytics meters)
• Summary meters
• Advanced bill creation

Bill Split

• Static percentage
• Dynamic percentage
• Advanced split

Chargeback icons

Account or meters can be a combination of types
Bill Calculation
Bill Split Source
Bill Split Destination

Example chargeback bill

Chargeback bills look just the same as regular utility bills, except they have a chargeback tag. They are stored in your database indefinitely or until you delete them.

Chargebacks is a licensed feature

The Chargebacks module appears if your organization added this feature and your role has access to the module.

Chargebacks module menu