Sustainability & Risk / Energy / Cost Administrator or Accounting Supervisor

Enter Bills, Line Items and Vendor Accounts, and Send Bills for Approval

Bills are the cornerstone of the Energy application. Each bill must have at least one line item to be processed for approval. Line items capture the Bill Type, Bill Units, Cost, and Quantity for each line on a given bill. Each time the bill line is saved, the Quantity entered is converted to the appropriate common unit based on the selected Bill Unit. This data also rolls up to the appropriate common unit on the corresponding bill.

You can enter more than one bill of each bill type from different vendors for the same building and time period. For example, you can enter two electric bills to be processed for a given building for a given month. This enables you to enter two bills in cases where your organizations receive separate invoices for transportation and delivery (T&D), and the electric commodity itself.

Note: If you receive energy bills that correspond to a group of buildings, you can enter bills using the Enter Bills for Groups of Buildings task. Using this task, you can define proration groups that enable you to enter one bill for multiple buildings, and specify how you want to prorate the bill.

Review the below guidelines for entering bill data to understand how you must enter data so that bills can be archived and approved. After reviewing these guidelines, you:

This is described in the following sections.

Guidelines for entering bill data

Adding vendors and vendor accounts

Entering bills of the same utility type and vendor

Adding and editing bills and their line items

Editing bills that were the result of prorating or aggregation

Sending a bill for approval

Guidelines for entering bill data

The following describes the guidelines for entering bills that are received on a monthly basis. Entering bills according to the following guidelines enables you to approve and archive bills, and to generate reports using the weather model regression analysis.

For bills that you receive on a regular monthly basis, these guidelines match the way your receive bills, and ensure that you have entered all bills without gaps.

However, if needed, you can configure bill processing so that certain bills types that you receive on a non-monthly basis are excluded from these application checks for approving or archiving. This enables you to approve and archive non-monthly bills and bills that have time period gaps. See Configuring Bill Processing - the Checks Done When Approving or Archiving Bills

You can also use the Bill Processing Exceptions report to have the application generate cost records that fit the requirements of the weather model regression analysis when you have entered bills in a way that does not match these guidelines. This report finds bills in the Bills table that do not fit the guidelines and enables you to take actions to fix these exceptions so that you can approve and archive the bills. See Bill Processing Exceptions Report.

If you do not want to exclude a bill type from the application checks, use the following guidelines for bill entry.

Adding vendors and vendor accounts

From the Enter Bills task, you can also add a vendor and a vendor account, if needed. When you enter bills you select from a drilldown list of vendors and vendor accounts, so vendor accounts are required to enter bills.

Note: The Business Process Owner for Accounting can also add vendor accounts, using the Define Vendor Accounts task.

To add a vendor using the Enter Bills task:

Access the Cost Administrator / Enter Bills task, and then follow these steps to enter the bill.

  1. Select the Vendor tab, and click Add New.
  2. In the Vendor panel, enter the following required information:

    Vendor Code: Enter a unique identifier for the vendor.

    Enter the following recommended fields:

    Email Address: Enter a current email address that matches the email address in the A/FM User's table. This ensures that the vendor will receive email notifications.

    Vendor Type: For energy vendors, make sure to set the Vendor Type to “Energy” as some forms and reports in the Energy application are restricted to include only vendors with a Vendor Type of “Energy”.

    Company Name and Contact: Enter this information if needed.

    Date - Expiration. Select the date the contract with this vendor expires.

  3. Click Save.

To add a vendor account:

  1. Select a vendor account from the drill-down list.
  2. From the Vendor Account tab, click Add New.

    The form for adding a new vendor account shows information for the selected vendor. The Vendor Code is automatically filled in based on the vendor you selected.

  3. Enter the following required field:

    Vendor Account Code: Enter the unique identifier for this vendor account.

    Vendor Account Code. Enter the unique identifier for this vendor account.

    Bill Type: Select the type of utility bill from the Select Values list.

    Site Code / Building Code. Select the site and building for the energy bill.

  4. Enter additional information, including the Billing, Service and Remit To address information as needed.
  5. Click Save.

Entering bills of same utility type and vendor

You can enter multiple bills of the same bill type for a given building and month for different vendors or for the same vendor. For example, you can enter two bills from the same vendor for the same month, one for the commodity received, and the other for transportation and delivery charges.

Adding or editing bills and their line items

Use the Enter Bills task to enter bills and line items for the vendors and vendor accounts you have added.

Note: From the Enter bills task, you can access bills that have not been prorated or aggregated, that resulted from a proration or aggregation on time, or that resulted from a proration by location. The bills that were the source of a proration by location (the parent bills) are managed through the Enter bills for group of buildings task.

To add or edit a bill:

  1. Access the task in one of the following ways:
  • If you are a Cost Administrator, select Sustainability & Risk / Energy / Cost Administrator / Enter Bills task.
  • If you are an Accounting Supervisor, select Sustainability & Risk / Energy / Account Supervisor/ Enter Bills.

The Enter Bills form appears. This form includes the Define Vendors, Accounts, Bills, or Bill Ines tabs. The drill-down Select list on the left includes all existing energy Vendors (vendors with the Vendor Type of Energy), and their Vendor Accounts, Bills and Bill Lines.

Note: The selection list is filtered to show only Vendors with a Vendor Type of “Energy”, and only bills with a Status of Completed, Pending Review, or Rejected. Bills with a Status of Pending Approval are only visible in the Approve and Archive view.

  1. Click the arrows next to the vendors to see the accounts for that vendor. Select the vendor account in the drill-down selection list, and the Bills tab. for that account becomes active.
  2. To edit a bill:
    1. Select the bill in the list of bills at the top of the form.

      The bottom pane fills in with details for the selected bill.

    2. Edit any items as necessary.
    3. Click Save to save your changes.
  3. To add a new bill:
    1. Select a vendor and then a vendor account from the selection list; from the Bills tab, click Add New.

      The form shows the data for the vendor you selected.

    2. Enter the following required bill data.

      Bill Code: A unique identifier for the bill. Typically, this includes the location and date for the bill.

      Bill Type: Select the type of utility bill, such as Gas - Natural, Gas - Propane, Electric, Water, and Sewer.

      Site / Building: Select the location covered by this bill.

      Important: When entering bills, ensure that you do not modify the building and site value to something other than what is specified for the Vendor Account Code and utility type. If the site and building are changed, when you send the bill for approval, it is not successfully sent, but you do not receive an error message to inform you of this.

      Date Service Starts / Date Service Ends. When bills are processed for approval, the application checks that the Date Service Starts for a bill is equal to the Date Service Ends for the bill for the previous billing period. You should enter these dates so that the Date Service Starts for a bill is equal to the Date Service Ends for the bill from the previous Billing Period.

      Date Bill Issued: Date that the vendor issued the bill.

      Date Payment Due: Select the due date.

      Billing Period: Select the month and year you would like the bill assigned to. This is critical to the reporting functionality of the Energy application. Bill service dates can span months; for this reason, you use the Billing Period to let the application know which month to assign the energy use to. Typically, this is the month that has the most service days.

      Description: Enter a description to clarify what the bill is for, or click Select Recently Entered Descriptions to select one.

    3. Click Save.

      When you click Save to accept the changes:

      The bill record is saved with a status of Awaiting Approval.

      If the bill type has not been excluded from the application checking that is done for gaps in service dates and Billing Period, and the bill has such gaps, you receive a warning message. In this case, you are able to save bills; however, you cannot approve and archive the bills. Only archived bills are included in the weather model analysis reports. See Configuring Bill Processing.

  4. To add a document to a bill:
    1. Save the bill record.

      The Document field now shows the Check In New Document button. This button is an arrow pointing up.

    2. Click the Check In New Document button and browse to select the file.

      The document is now saved with the record. See Using the Document Management System.

      Note: You can view the attached documents from the Bills and Line Items, Archived Bills and Line Items, and the Cost and Usage report (when viewed as data.)

To add or edit a bill line:

Before a bill can be sent for approval, it must have at least one line item entered for it.

The Vendor ID and Vendor Account ID together with the Vendor Meter ID (here and in the data_point table) enables direct correlation of meters and bill quantities (and, therefore, comparison of measured values and billed values).

  1. In the Select pane, drill-down to the bill level, and select a bill.

    The Bill Lines tab becomes active, and shows the bill lines for the selected bill.

  2. From the Bill Line tab, click Add New.

    The form shows the data for the bill you selected (Vendor Code, Bill Code, and Bill Type).

  3. Enter the following required Bill Line data.

    Bill Line ID: This fills in with an auto-generated number to ensure that the bill lines IDs are unique, but you can change this if needed.

    Quantity: Enter the quantity the bill is for (this is the amount based on the bill units.).

    Bill Units: Select the bill units. This specifies the type of unit that will be tracked on this utility bill. See Defining Bill Units.

    Amount Expense / Amount Income: Enter the Amount Expense or Amount Income (in the case of a credit).

    Vendor Meter ID. Use this field to correlate this bill with the correct Data Point / Meter(s). Select from a list of utility vendor meter IDs, or type in a new one.

    Vendor Rate ID. Use this field to correlate this bill line with the correct rate structure. The selection list is restricted to show only rate types for this Vendor Code, Vendor Account Code, Rollup Type and Dates.

    Description. Enter a description to clarify what the bill line is for, or click Select Recently Entered Descriptions to select one.

  4. Click Save.

Editing bills that were the result of prorating or aggregation

Proration by Time:

When you edit a bill, the application checks if the bill was involved in a proration or aggregation action by time, that is, if the bill was a source or result for a proration or aggregation action by time. If the bill was, you are alerted with a message such as : “The bill you’re trying to update was involved in a proration or aggregation action by time. If you continue with the changes you could cause some inconsistencies. Do you want to apply your changes?” with options Yes and No. For example, i you change consumption values or costs for a child bill, this could put the child bill and parent bill out-of-sync.

Proration by Location:

Be aware that editing bills generated by a proration action for a group of buildings (proration by location) should be done with care. When you prorate bills by building group, the application checks that the amounts for the original bill matches the totals for the generated bills. However, if you edit the child bills, this would put the child bills and the original bills out-of-sync. All of the reports except the Usage with Weather Model show data from the child bills, while the Usage with Weather Model and cost records are generated using the original bill for the group. If you change the Consumption, Volume, Amount Income or the Amount Expense for any child bill without changing the bill for the group, there will not be consistency between the reports on the one hand, and the Usage with Weather Model and cost records on the other.

Sending a bill for approval

After entering a bill and its line items, you send the bill for approval.

Be aware of the following when sending bills for approval:

To send a bill for approval:

  1. Click on the selection lists to drill-down to the bill you wish to send for approval.
  2. Select the check boxes for the bills you want to send for approval.
  3. Click Send for Approval.

    Note: Once a Bill has been sent for approval it will no longer be available in the Enter Bills view. Bills with a Status of Pending Approval are only visible in the Review and Approve Bills view.