Bill Validation

Industry figures estimate that utility invoices contain errors of between 3% and 5% by value of overcharging and with ever more complex contracts being used this looks set to continue.

The optima™ Utility Billing System is a fully audit trailed energy accounting system for validating and managing the payment of invoices received in either electronic or paper form. UBS performs over 60 separate checks to identify any errors on supplier invoices so that action can be taken to recover overcharges as quickly as possible.

Electronic billing through EDI or XML saves a huge amount of time in loading invoices and eliminates keying errors and optima™ supports all electricity, gas and water supplier formats. Thousands of invoices can be loaded and validated within hours rather than weeks, invoices are validated against a rigorous set of criteria to ensure that any errors are highlighted prior to payment. Even the most complex electricity contracts can be analysed with calculation of all pass-through charges including DUoS, Triads, DUoS & TUoS losses, BSUoS, AAHEDC, Renewable Obligation, Meter Operations, DC, DA and CCL, FiT and CM. For Gas contracts, it will validate the transportation charges on pass-through contracts, and even check that the calorific value is calculated correctly.

optima™ will automatically handle Withdrawn and Amended bills and allow splitting of bills that contain brought forward balances or multiple months of invoice data. Any problem bills that cannot be resolved can either be rejected or placed in suspense for resolution later. Integration with finance systems such as SAP™or Oracle™ is also provided so that detailed costing information can be transferred into corporate accounts without the need for rekeying data.