Over 200 of our current clients are housing associations and, having taken on a further 17 housing associations last year, we recognise that procurement officers and finance managers balance heavy workloads. Much of this relates to liaising with tenants and supervising staff, not to mention keeping on top of energy and water usage and managing payments to suppliers. Outsourcing energy management to specialists who can guarantee quality service and value for money eases the workload and frees up time for you, given that it can be a particularly large task. Ultimately, we want to make your life easier and decrease your costs, and managing your utilities efficiently and smoothly is a way we can guarantee this.
HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS
Outsourcing energy management to save you time and money.
Operational visibility – making sure you can account for everything
With so much going on in your everyday work life, we understand that it is sometimes difficult to ensure operational visibility. We produce concise reports and summaries weekly, and send these to you on your day of choice, highlighting total amounts due for payment, alongside accruals, meter reads and other crucial billing details. This is all part of our Efficient Cost Management service.
As well as showing specific information for each property in your housing association on the Asset Register, we make sure you can account for all utility-related finances and be sure of where your money is going. To keep track of your void properties and manage them effectively, take a look at our void property management services.
Billing queries and recovering payments
Do you ever worry that you’re being overcharged by your energy supplier? We have found that one in five invoices has some form of error, so we perform 47 different checks on each invoice. Outsourcing energy management will prevent you from having to deal with a vast amount of billing queries, such as incorrect tariff rates and extra tax charges, and ensures that all invoice errors are identified. This guarantees that you and your tenants will only pay for energy that is actually used. Have a look at our tenant billing services for a package tailored to your housing association’s individual needs.
We also know that getting in contact with suppliers and resolving queries can be tricky, so we’ll remove this problem for you and liaise on your behalf. As an energy broker, we have managers dedicated solely to us within specific energy suppliers, meaning that we receive same-day responses and resolutions from them. We can also help negotiate refunds for you and have saved our clients over £130 million since 2006.
Struggling to manage bills and validation
We know that, due to overseeing multiple properties, housing associations receive large amounts of utility invoices – and processing these can be a big task. Our specialist validation system means that each bill is audited and then stored to be viewed at any time, providing a full invoice history for each site. This wealth of information helps us to solve disputes with suppliers, answer billing queries, and highlight when unusually high amounts of energy are used. We can also direct your paper invoices to our offices and send organised electronic copies to you, taking away the hassle of matching up sites to the relevant bill.
Getting to grips with complex utility markets and offers
Securing good offers with suppliers can be incredibly time consuming and stressful, and is not something you likely want to spend a large portion of your time doing. Our energy analysts procure the best deals from the ever-changing energy, water and waste disposal market, making sure you get the best tariffs possible for all sites in your housing association. We can also arrange for multiple sites to be managed under one contract with unified billing dates, simplifying the supervision process even further for you.
Energy Outlook for Social Housing 2021
Our report outlines the upcoming trends in the energy sector that will impact housing associations, and how to prepare for them.
Download our report.
WHAT YOU NEED AND HOW WE CAN HELP
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