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Amerex Energy Bill-Auditing and Web-Based EMS Solution
Services Summary
Invoice Auditing and Correction
Amerex provides a utility management software solution that forges utility invoice and data
reception, auditing, accounts payable exporting, and aggregated energy usage analysis. Our solution
is an Internet and cloud-based system, which utilizes a facility tree that is fully customizable and can
provide a hierarchy of data from the meter to any organization-wide level for reporting.
Amerex will integrate any designated facility. Your facilities will be viewable across your entire
organization to improve management interaction and engagement.
The system can track costs, usage and demand for the utility types such as electricity and natural gas,
as well as water, waste, etc. Essentially, anything with an invoice can be tracked in the system. The
solution is capable of tracking limitless facilities and accounts.
General Approach
Amerex approach starts with data collection. We will work with you to organize the reception of
utility data from paper bills, through transmittals or redirection to a P.O. Box, as well as OCR
services to Electronic Data Interchange straight from the utility. We organize your facilities to get a
complete utility profile for each. Once we gather all utility information, it is uploaded to our web-
based software where any person within your organization with an Internet connection can access.
The software’s security is based on a user’s login and can be assigned to any level within the facility
tree hierarchy.
Training and Set-up
Once your accounting and operations users have been setup, we begin training on our system. This
training is typically given via live webinars. The webinar sessions are also recorded for future use by
your staff. We normally give a general overview of the system first. Once the customer has had time
to experience the portal and develop specific questions, we follow up with a more detailed session
tailored to the customers’ specific needs. This allows us to better equip our customers with pertinent
training knowledge rather than a standardized curricula.
Once training is complete and you’re comfortable using the system, we establish the energy profile
for each facility. This process enables you to organize facilities by energy performance, which helps
prioritize efficiency improvements. The software solution will track the progress of energy and cost
savings from efficiency improvements and compare against the baseline set prior to efficiency
implementations.
Verification and Validation of Invoices
Our system supports two independent methodologies for detecting utility billing errors: tariff-based
verification and metric-based validation.
The first method – tariff-based verification – is a premium audit that detects problems in the actual
calculation of the invoice based on the applicable rate, as well as provides flags for new meters being
installed, gaps or overlaps in meter readings, and changes in tariffed rates. To accomplish this, we
use the meter readings from current month’s bills and the previous month's to first look for meter
reading errors, gaps/overlaps in meter readings or meter read dates. Then, we use the meter readings
and utility's tariff that is programmed into our system to fully recalculate the invoices from the meter
readings up. This recalculation allows us to identify errors in delivery charges, meter readings, energy
prices, tax issues, etc. It also signals us when a new meter is installed.
Because we take the actual invoice, scan it, upload it into the portal and recalculate the invoice based
on our internal tariff rate engines, the tariff-based invoice verification process is more expensive on a
per invoice basis as compared to the metric-based validation process. However, it is the most
accurate method.
Our second method – metric-based validation – is a highly flexible, pattern-based algorithm for
identifying potential exceptions in invoices. Once an invoice is received and scanned, it is processed
through the entire array of available exception patterns. When new patterns are identified, they can be
added to the array with a minimum of configuration allowing the system to expand to changing needs
in this regard. We’d like an opportunity to give you a live demonstration to illustrate both methods.
Utility Bill Receipt
We can structure a utility bill receipt redirection if you prefer. First, we would work with utilities and
suppliers to get any data that may be available electronically via image or data stream. Second, we
would contact the billing party directly, with a list of accounts to be redirected. We transmit the
account numbers to be redirected to the billing party contact via email or fax. Last, we follow up one
business day before the redirection date, and transmit the account numbers and redirection date to
ensure the bill receipt process is successfully completed.
Imaging of Invoices
Our process includes ways to receive invoices: as original paper deliveries or as electronic images
received via email, via electronic drops to our inbound FTP site (simpler) or via Service-Oriented
Architecture upload service (more secure). Once received, paper invoices are scanned and processed
with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software and converted to searchable PDF format.
Electronically received invoice files, if not already in PDF format, are converted to searchable PDF
format using similar scanning and OCR processes. Files with significant processing errors are
rejected and reported back to the originator with a request for an updated document or image. This
reduces overall costs and improves the quality of the data compared to employing significant manual
processes to handle low-quality images. Faxes are prime examples of low quality images.
Online Reporting Capability
Our online portal provides multi-variable normalization and optimization such as weather and
business metric benchmarking (energy cost/usage per unit of product, per square foot, etc.).
Portal access via our website www.amerexenergyservices.com
Navigation and Site Overview
The portal is organized into two functional areas: 1) Accounting and 2) Operations. The Accounting
side is most useful for your accounting professionals. The data is displayed in the bill cycle format.
Graphs are viewable in fiscal year as well as calendar formats and invoices may be retrieved easily
and efficiently. The Operations side is useful for energy managers and facility managers. The data
under this tab is gathered from your cycle reads then straight line averaged to the day and placed in
monthly buckets. The information is more meaningful to view monthly for operations type reports.
You get to choose how to organize the data in the corporate tree hierarchy. This allows you to
aggregate data by utility provider, geographically or by operational variance (group similar facility
operations to one another). We can customize the organizational hierarchy of your facilities.
Organization is defined by you, but Amerex will suggest ways we’ve seen companies successfully
organize their data.
Once the administrator is established, you can assign access to any level in the hierarchy. Access will
grant that user the ability to view information from that point in the hierarchy, to any downstream
level. Each user can also select the informational view for reports at any point in the hierarchy in
which they have access.
Data Integration and Data Analysis
The software solution also provides the following features:
Full Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) interface capability
Green Button-compliant data exchange capability
Data and reporting can be exported in XML, CSV, PDF, MHTML, Excel, TIFF and Word
formats
Track your energy efficiency initiatives
Batch reports and customizable reports. Reports are available at all levels of the facility tree
hierarchy, by utility type (enterprise, regional, site-specific).
Examples of pre-defined reports include:
o Energy and dollar savings
o Six (6) benchmarking reports, including costs/usage per square foot
o Actual and weather-normalized annual energy summary
o Interval data recorder (IDR) reporting
o Calendarization of operational data
o Greenhouse gas reporting tool
Customizable business metric reports based on Key Performance Indicators. Examples:
o Energy cost or usage per sales revenue
o Energy cost or usage per item shipped
Customizable alerts and audit rules
Unlimited number of concurrent users
Current and historical utility invoice images
Year over year usage and cost
Portal is accessible on smart phones; iPhone, Android, etc.