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Bill Consolidation & Energy Information Services

Do you feel powerless when it comes to managing your energy bills? Call Dave Stineman (dstineman@consumersenergy.coop) at 641-754-1645 to learn more about our bill consolidation and information services. Ask about taking part in a pilot project to see if your company would benefit from these services.

Our objective in offering these services is to provide information to you that will enable you to more effectively manage and control your utility and energy costs.

We can help multi-location companies consolidate all utility expenses (electric, gas, water, sewer, fuel oil, waste and telecom expenses) into one payment, receive customized summary billing reports and help you eliminate utility billing errors. We can also help you verify current utility rates and benchmark energy efficiency for all corporate facilities. The data can provide you with a vehicle to better understand, manage and control corporate-wide utility expenses.

The following are benefits of these services:

• A total outsourcing solution for utility payables including:
1. Invoice mail receipt and processing
2. Invoice GL, location and vendor coding
3. Vendor file maintenance
4. Invoice data entry, editing, validation, and error resolution
5. Control reporting and balancing
• Customized internet based energy reporting and graphing tools
• Automated e-mail exception reporting of utility usage and cost data that exceeds criteria
• Benchmarking of consumption and cost data across facilities
• Trend analysis of all bill variables
• Track billing errors, energy savings and number of bills processed via internet reports
• Duplicate payment protection and balance due research
• Accelerated invoice processing, assuring prompt vendor payments
• Verification of invoice liability and validation of utility account numbers
• Systematic bill verification checks
• Consolidated vendor payments eliminating the following:
  1. Check postage, stock and envelopes
  2. Bank check processing and reconciliation fees
  3. Check storage, microfilming and retrieval cost
  4. Check security issues (stolen check stock, fraudulent checks, amount alterations)
• Utility payment funding via a single daily funds transfer
• Processing of electric, gas, water, sewer, fuel oil, waste and telecom invoices
• Customized payables reporting
• Customized accounting/GL interfaces
• Complete vendor proof of payment and customer service
• Internet based invoice inquiry complete with the ability to retrieve utility invoices images
• Archived images of bills delivered quarterly on CD-ROMs
• A missed consumption period. The utility bill record checks all time frames for billing clarification.
• Meter read dates out of sequence. This verifies that each meter is still in service.
• New, deleted or modified meter. The system determines a new, deleted or modified meter by comparing the present meter count to the last meter count.
• Amount on the bill does not match the line item totals. The bill totals are checked for accuracy and if there is a discrepancy an exception is generated and resolved.
• Utility vendor is not recognized. The vendor submitting the invoice must match the names on the utility account database in order to receive payment. * Utility account number is not recognized. Utility account number is validated to the customer's utility account database before payment is issued.
• Late fees appear on the bill. All late fees on invoices will be investigated with the causes noted and avoided in future billing cycles.
• Date field validation. Invoice, service period and due dates are all verified for validation.