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About the Bill Reconciliation Report
This report allows you to validate invoices that you receive from utility companies. Once you get an invoice, you build a report in Cost Profiler using the same meters, billing cycle, and rate as used on the invoice. If you have been billed correctly, and your records are correct, the Bill Reconciliation Report in Cost Profiler should match that on the invoice, thereby allowing you to “reconcile” the invoice from a utility.
The bill reconciliation report provides information for a single account over a specific billing period.
If there is a one-time anomaly that does not get associated with any single rate component, the user can fill in the difference in the “Miscellaneous Actual Cost” entry field. This provides the ability to profile actual costs in other reports, as well.
Figure 4-30 Example Bill Reconciliation Report.
About the Bill Reconciliation Report Display
The Bill Reconciliation Report shows important details about the account and gives all the necessary utility account and contact information. Following are the primary display panes in the Bill Reconciliation Report:
Figure 4-31 Bill Reconciliation Report Display Areas.
- Site Tree Window
This window works like all other site tree windows. See "Site Tree Window", for details.
- Cost
Once a report is run, “Calculated Cost” and “Actual Cost” columns are populated. If discrepancies are found, the user can manually enter the valid value for each rate component in the “Actual Cost” column and click Save Changes. These changes are saved as an XML file in the relational database and provide the ability for the user to profile these “actual” costs throughout the Cost Profiler application.
- Details
After running a reconciliation report, you can click on any individual rate component to see the rate component details in the pane on the right. For example, if you click on the rate component called “High Peak Energy Charge”, you see total units for the component, the fee associated with the component, the total, and the fee schedule.
Click the column headers to display a pie chart and table for each of the rate components, as shown in Figure 4-32. The data in the table can be exported to a spreadsheet for further manipulation. Clicking on the column header in the table re-sorts the data based on ascending or descending values.
Figure 4-32 Calculated Cost Contributors and Rate Details.
- Billing Period
Select the billing period for the invoice you wish to reconcile, based on month and year. The billing cycle for the rate (or rates) attached to the selected meter automatically appears with the start date, end date, and time, as was defined by the administrator in Attach A Rate (refer to "About Attach A Rate").
Note: If the Start and End days are not correct, adjust them and save the changes. The billing cycle fields are originally set when you attach a rate to a meter.
This report will always default to a billing cycle, not calendar month, making it important to have accurate billing cycle information when attaching a rate to a meter.
- Billing Period Notes
The Bill Reconciliation report has a Notes feature that you can use by clicking the “Notes...”
button. This feature allows you to enter text information about the data that is associated with a particular meter for a particular billing cycle. For example, you may enter a note to describe what changes were made for a reconciliation report and why they were made. The note is saved and may be edited or removed by someone with administrative privileges, or by the original author.
Figure 4-33 Billing Period Notes.
To add, remove, or edit a note from the Billing Period Notes dialog box, select the note that you want to edit and use the Add Note, Edit Note or Remove Note button, to perform the desired function.
- Rate Component Details dialog box.
The Rate Component Details dialog box is provided to allow you to open several Rate Component Detail panes at once and resize them as necessary, as shown in Figure 4-34.
Use the Popup Details button
to open the Rate Component Details pane into a separate dialog box for viewing. These detailed views will remain open even if you move to another meter, run another report, and open another detailed dialog box. Click the Close button to close individual detail dialog boxes or close them all at once by selecting a report other than the Bill Reconciliation report.
Figure 4-34 Rate Component Details dialog box.
Creating a Bill Reconciliation Report
To create a Bill Reconciliation Report, perform the following tasks:
Start the Bill Reconciliation Report
- Launch
shortBrandName from your browser using the following URL:http://hostname/eas
where hostname is the name or IP address of the Web Supervisor.- Enter appropriate login information to gain access to the home page.
Note: From within an existing report, it is easier to simply use the Goto: menu on the upper right to select the desired report, as an alternative to the following step.
- From the home page, open Bill Reconciliation by clicking on the Bill Reconciliation link. The Bill Reconciliation report template displays.
Note: If you desire, from within an existing report, it is easier to simply use the Goto Reports Pull-down menu on the upper right to select the desired report.
Set Report Parameters
- The tree displays sites and points as filtered by the Site Filter drop down list. In the site tree, click on the meter that represents the account that you want to reconcile. The Cost area displays the cost table, with empty ($0.00) fields.
Note: Only meters that have rates attached are valid for reconciliation.
- In the Billing Period group, select the month option and type in the year for the desired billing period. By default, the regular account billing period is loaded into the rate Start and End fields.
Note: If the Start and End days are not correct, adjust them and save the changes. The billing cycle fields are originally set when you attach a rate to a meter (refer to "About Attach A Rate").
- Click on Run Report to create the report. Figure 4-26 is an example of a Cost Ranking report using sample data.
Figure 4-35 Example Bill Reconciliation Report.
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