Bill audits overview

Bill audits are powerful tools for validating utility bill data. They check for:

• Accuracy
• Unusual patterns in use or cost

When a potential issue is found, the audit automatically flags the bill for manual review.

How bill flags work

• A single bill flag can include one or more issues.
• You can review and manage each issue separately.
• When all issues on a flag are closed, the flag closes automatically.

Four ways to view and manage bill flags and issues

• Bill lists 
  Use configured filters to view flagged bills and related issues.
• Flags tab 
  Available for accounts, cost centers, meters, sites, and organizations to review specific flags.
• Dashboards 
  View flag types, open issues, and assignees.
• Report-27
  Generate a list of all flagged bills and issue information.

Bill audits

Bill audits help ensure accurate data for reporting and analysis. They:

• Run automatically when you enter or import bills.
• Analyze bills for errors and provide immediate feedback.
• Skip void and accrual bills.

Disable audits on specific accounts

You can disable audits for any account from the Actions menu or directly from the bill.

Chargeback bills and audits

• Outlier audits run automatically when chargeback bills are created.
• No other audits are triggered during the bill creation process.
• If you edit a chargeback bill and it fails any audit, the bill is flagged.
• You can review and analyze generated bills in Chargeback Workflow.

How do bills get flagged?

• Automatically with bill audits.
• Manually by users.

Bill Flag rules

• When all flag issues are resolved, the flag is automatically resolved.
• When a flag is resolved, all flag issues are marked as resolved.
• If you edit the bill and the change does not fix a previously resolved issue that issue is reopened.

Manage bill flags and flag issues

• Each bill can only have one assigned flag.
• Flags have a type (users can also create their own types). Audit Exception is a flag type assigned when a bill fails a configured audit from the Bills module menu.
  • Each audit failure creates a flag issue. These issues can be assigned and resolved independently of the flag.

Example of Audit Exception

Issues are shown in the banner and are managed with Manage Issues. 

Each issue can be managed separately. When there are multiple issues on a flag you can reopen an issue if needed. When you resolve the last issue on a flag the flag is automatically resolved.

Dashboard widgets for flagged bills

You can build a dashboard dedicated to viewing and resolving bill flags or add bill flag content to an existing dashboard.

Bill flag during manual bill entry

If your user role has permission you see additional options when entering and saving a flagged bill.

Save bill and resolve flag

Resolve the flag while saving the bill. This is recorded in flag details.

Save and flag bill

Save the bill and flag it for future review.

Resolve a bill flag

• If you edit a flagged bill and it fixes the issue, the flag is automatically resolved. This update is recorded in the Flag Details tab.
• If no edit is needed, you can manually resolve the flag issue.
• The Flag Details tab keeps a full history of all status updates and comments.

Assign and update a bill flag

If your user role has permission, you can add a flag to any bill that requires additional attention.

• Flag Types such as billing error or questionable bill, are in the drop-down, create additional types to help categorize your bills.
• Assignee is optional, you can assign one or more users. You are only able to assign users with a user role or permissions to edit the bill. Type part of the first or last name to see a smaller list of users.
• Comments provide a running history of research and actions on the bill.
• Hold bill from accounting export to hold the bill and flag at the same time. (If licensed for Accounting Export.)
• You can track and report on savings with the Cost Recovery option.

Manage bill flags in bulk

You can manage bill flags in bulk from a bill list. You can also manage flags and flag issues through flag lists.

1. Set your filters or use the quick filters to find flagged bills you want to take action on.
2. Click the flag button.
3. Select Resolve or Update.

Permissions

Chargeback bills and audits

For bill splits and summary bills, problems with the source bills lead to problems with generated bills.

Bill Audits are performed on source bills to help you determine if they are correct. If the source bills are correct it follows the generated bills are correct.

Chargeback Workflow is designed to help you easily identify issues before and after creating chargeback bills.

Only outlier audits are performed on the generated chargeback bills.

Example

For most types of chargebacks there can be legitimate reasons for multiple bills in a billing period, and this would cause a large number of bills to be flagged in error.

Chargeback bills analysis

Use the Chargeback Workflow to review and analyze generated chargeback bills. Look for the following issues:

• Missing bills
  Identify meters without a bill where one is expected, this may indicate missing readings.
• Duplicate bills
  Spot meters that have multiple bills.
• High use variance
  Compare use to the previous month or same month last year to find unusual spikes or drops.
• Abnormal values
  Flag bills with negative, zero, or unusually high use or cost.
• Abnormal unit costs
  Detect when the unit cost is significantly different from expected values.