Are you responsible for paying your organization's utility bills? Ever wonder why there are so many charges, fees, and taxes? Have you tried to get an explanation from your utility company? If you haven't been successful in understanding your bills, then it's time to get a utility bill checkup.
Your job is to support your organization's mission - it is not to be an expert in analyzing your utility bills. I recently approached the facilities manager of a nonprofit to ask if his organization was interested in a utility bill audit and his response was "You are correct 3rd party utility audits are an important component of any utility management program. We have had 2 such audits over the past 18 months and a new one is currently underway."
Some firms have staff members track their utility and telecom usage on a spreadsheet. By doing this they may be able to identify some obvious errors. However, a trained auditor will be able to dig deeper and identify many more errors.
Having a review of your organization's utility and telecom bills is likely to result in the recovery of money that you've been over paying. Over 70% of those organizations that are audited find that they are due a refund. An audit can identify money that has been overpaid for years. Each state has a different statute of limitations for recovery, but 3 years is the minimum period for review, while in a few states auditors can review 4 years worth of bills.
A third-party utility bill audit will evaluate more than four dozen factors that can affect your bills. A trained auditor will review the bills and a proprietary software program will be used in the audit. It is unlikely that an organization's staff would be able to evaluate the following factors among many more.
- Analyze past usage to see if there are meter discrepancies.
- Verify that tariffs have been added correctly to the invoices.
- Identify unnecessary minimum or duplicate billing charges.
Here's what the manager at an assisted living facility told us after we conducted its audit. "It was hard to imagine that there could be an error in our utility billings, as we track these metrics religiously. However to our good fortune, our auditor uncovered a $43,000 billing error."
The U.S. Treasury estimates that there is over $30 billion in utility and telecom overcharges that have yet to be claimed. There is no better time than now to have a utility bill checkup for your organization. What overdue maintenance project or much anticipated new venture could your organization tackle when you receive money that you weren't expecting from a utility bill audit?
And it is easy to get your audit started; we just need one recent copy of your bills. Our audit costs nothing upfront and our compensation comes from sharing with our client in any amount that is recovered. Check out http://www.utilitybillcheckup.com to find out more about how you can start your utility bill checkup.
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