Report-13

Bill Analysis

The Bill Analysis report helps you identify and investigate abnormal bills using both line charts and a data table.

What it does

  • Line Charts: Show trends in usage, cost, or unit cost so you can visually spot anything that looks unusual.
  • Outlier Detection: The report uses a quadratic regression formula to automatically highlight bills that fall outside of expected patterns—these are your potential outliers.
  • Detailed Data Table:
    • Displays one page per outlier bill, making it easy to focus on each case.
    • Includes historical billing data to help you compare and decide if the bill truly looks incorrect or just slightly different.

Why use Report-13?

  • Quickly flag bills that may be errors or need review.
  • Back up your findings with chart visuals and supporting historical data.
  • Save time by focusing only on bills that are likely to need action.

Report-13: Recommendations for Use

Report-13 is built to help you audit recently entered bills. To get the most relevant and useful results, follow these tips when setting up the report:

1. Focus on Recent Bills

Because this report is designed to catch issues in current billing data, you should set one of the following filters:

  • Billing Period: Choose a recent month.
  • Batch: Select a recent batch of bills.
  • Bill Entry Date: Filter for bills recently entered into the system.

This ensures you're reviewing the most up-to-date bills for potential issues.

2. Set Outlier Sensitivity

Use the Outlier analysis sensitivity filter to control how strict the report is when identifying potential issues:

  • Severe Only: Shows only the most probable or extreme problems.
  • High and Moderate: Loosens the criteria to catch more possible issues, even if they're not as critical.

Pick the setting that matches how thorough you want the review to be.

3. Choose What to Analyze

Use the Value analyzed for outliers filter to decide which bill values should be checked for irregularities:

  • Usage
  • Cost
  • Demand
  • Or any combination of these three

Select what’s most relevant for your audit goals.

Report-13 tip

You can subscribe to Report-13 to get emails when problematic bills are entered. Configure the report and subscribe to the report. Use the option to Only send report if data is available.

Set your filters for Report-13

  1. Active accounts only
    Decide whether to include only active accounts.
    If this filter is not applied, your report includes both active and inactive accounts.
  2. Void bills
    Include if you want a full audit history.
    Exclude to focus only on valid financial activity.
  3. Number of comparison years
    Choose how many past years to include.
  4. Outlier analysis sensitivity
    Adjusts how sensitive the system is to detecting unusual bills.
  5. Value analyzed for outliers
    Set the values you want analyzed to determine if the bill is an outlier.

Other filters to consider for Report-13

  1. Limit the size of the report
    Set the Billing period, Batch, or Entry date.
  2. Cost
    Reduce the report size by filtering out low-cost bills that may not need review.

Available filters for Report-13

Required filters

  • Account is active - If this filter is not included, includes both active and inactive accounts are including in the report.
  • Bill is void - If this filter is not included both void and not void are included.
  • Number of comparison years - Number of historical years to use for comparison to the current bill.
  • Outlier analysis sensitivity - Decide what potential problem bills to include, select (Severe Only) to report on the most likely problems or be more sensitive (and less restrictive) and include High or Moderate problems.
  • Value analyzed for outliers - Select one or more values you want to analyze.

Recommended filters

  • Account number 
  • Batch
  • Billing period
  • Commodity
  • Commodity category
  • Cost 
  • Meter group
  • Topmost cost center code
  • Topmost cost center name
  • Topmost place code
  • Topmost place name
  • Vendor code 
  • Vendor name

Optional Filters

  • Account name
  • Accounting period
  • Accounts in cost center code
  • Accounts in cost center name
  • Bill entered by
  • Bill entry date
  • Bill has been split
  • Bill ID
  • Bill import verified
  • Bill is approved
  • Bill is from external vendor - When this filter is not selected, the report includes data from both vendor (external) and chargeback (internal) bills.
  • Exported to AP
  • Exported to GL
  • Held from accounting export
  • Include accrual bills
  • Include reversed accrual bills
  • Meters in site code
  • Meters in site name
  • Rate schedule
  • Site group