Utility Invoice Audit and Monitoring

Electricity providers continue to add complexity to their billing structure to add surcharges for Peak Demand, Power Factor, Ratchet Rule and other services. Be smart about energy and make sure that your business doesn’t pay for services you do not use or receive. Call us today about a utility audit!

Utility invoices are becoming more complex as electricity providers continue to add charges for items such as Peak Demand, Power Factor, Ratchet Rule, etc.

Our utility invoice audit could save you money! In addition, the utility rate structure and various local, city, and state charges can be confusing to many utility customers.

Frequently there are mistakes on utility invoices. On average, one out of four Blue Ocean clients are found to have utility invoice issues upon review.

Blue Ocean analyzes our clients’ past and current utility invoices and checks for inaccuracies in billing during audits. We also offer a monthly auditing service where we analyze the bill right when it is issued and track benchmarking scores.

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utility invoice audit

Our Utility Invoice Audit Service

Blue Ocean offers utility invoice auditing as a basic service with our Compliance Audit all the way up to our Comprehensive Energy Audit. We also offer a monthly audit service where Blue Ocean generates a summary report indicating any issues with the utility bill and how benchmarking scores are progressing.

Blue Ocean’s utility invoice audit monthly service includes the following:

  1. Utility rate verification
  2. Historical energy consumption analysis
  3. Electricity “Demand” (kW) analysis
  4. Power Factor analysis
  5. Load Factor
  6. Benchmarking scores trend analysis

Blue Ocean offers this Utility Invoice Audit service to multiple clients to help monitor invoice errors and line items, consumption and cost, new rates, energy ratings etc.

 

Common Utility Invoice Errors:

  1. Error in invoice calculation
  2. Incorrect rates utilized
  3. Invoice sent for closed account
  4. Old meters still incurring charges
  5. Demand reset not functioning
  6. Duplicate line item charges
  7. Incorrect meter reading
  8. Account credits not adjusted
  9. Invoice billing period overlaps with previous bill
  10. In deregulated markets, supplier contract overlap
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Office Building, Austin, TX

Upon review of this clients’ invoices, we found that the measured quantity of Peak Demand (kW) had been the same for six consecutive months. Blue Ocean contacted the utility and it was confirmed that the peak demand reset function had not taken place. The client received a sizable refund.

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Shopping Center, Dallas, TX

Upon this client’s utility invoice review, Blue Ocean discovered that three old and discontinued meters were still being charged customer service charges. Blue Ocean was able to obtain a refund for 12 months of customer service charges for the three meters.

Office Building, Austin, TX

This client’s facility had recently had a change of ownership. The new owners (Blue Ocean’s client) were inexplicably put on the wrong utility structure by the local utility, resulting in our client being overcharged. Blue Ocean got the rate issue corrected and the client received a full refund for the overbilling.