Efficient Cost Management for utilities

Start by asking yourself some simple questions

How many sites
and meters do you
pay utility bills for?

How much do
you actually spend
monthly/quarterly/yearly?

What contracts
do you have
in place?

What rates
are you
paying?

How do you
control your energy
and water costs?

How can consumption
and spend reports
help your financial planning?

Tidy assets, tidy mind

...and tidy savings

Understanding your energy and water portfolio is the first step towards Efficient Cost Management for utilities. A well-managed asset register means you will never miss an opportunity to reduce your consumption and expenses. To achieve savings and efficiencies you need to be aware of what utilities you have and how much an individual asset contributes throughout its life, taking into account its age, location and consumption pattern.

So far, we have achieved over £130 million in savings and refunds for our customers. We keep your costs and budget under control with our Efficient Cost Management for utilities.

We recommend our Efficient Cost Management solution especially to housing associations, education organisations, corporates, and property management companies.

INVOICE VALIDATION

Nearly 20% of all utility invoices contain at least one error. Invoice validation finds these errors.

We have the most thorough invoice validation process in the industry – we validate a total of 3.5 million invoices annually, which totals 250,000 monthly. We check every utility invoice from your gas, electricity and water suppliers for consistency and accuracy, instead of only 1 in 100 invoices. In addition to the full audit, we also conduct an analysis to ensure your consumption is in line with historic trends.

What we do for you:

Check you are billed for correct meters and reads

Ensure your bill follows on from the last received bill

Ensure billed use is in sync with historic trends

Keep billing and accruals up to date

Generate reports with your own scheme codes

Make savings

”Monarch were most helpful in negotiating with our electricity supplier when we discovered a very large shortfall in their invoicing to us. The potential bill, going back over 10 years, was almost £1.5 million. The eventual result was an agreement to settle the shortfall at £108,000. We have continued to use Monarch to negotiate our energy supply contracts and are happy to recommend them for this.
Roger KeenanManaging Director / City-Lifeline

RETROSPECTIVE COST RECOVERY

When we sign up a new client we will always perform a retrospective bill audit. This has proven, time and again, to be very successful in setting a solid foundation together with your asset register for the ongoing invoice validation and Efficient Cost Management for utilities. For example, we recently obtained savings and refunds of £48,292 after a retro audit for Trust Housing Association. Our retrospective audit analyses the previous six years’ worth of your billing history to find potential recoverable refunds.

The process is as follows:

Collect all data, process and analyse it

Get copies of past utility invoices

Audit rates, tariffs and charges

Submit a report of findings

Negotiate a refund for you

Set a solid foundation by combining Retrospective Audits with Smart Asset Management

Ongoing Daily Supplier Management

A little bit extra from your dedicated team

CREDIT/DEBT MANAGEMENT

• Get supplier account statements and other data
• Check availability of historical or current credit
• Investigate missing data and billing periods
• Request a pay-back for credit from the supplier
• Check no debt is outstanding on account
• Submit payment reports as remittance for correct allocation

BILLING QUERIES

• Query all incorrect invoices with the supplier
• Negotiate the release of recoverable refunds
• Recover all BACS payments and cheque refunds
• Query report with a breakdown of claims and recoveries