Bill Verification, step by step
This is the long version of bill verification: what you are actually doing, the date rule the picker enforces, how to capture a bill, how to read the result, and the two charges that catch people out. For the short version, start with what bill verification is.
Who this is for. Anyone running verifications themselves: a customer checking their own account, or a metering partner running them across client sites.
Before you start, read What Bill Verification is for the short version. This is the long one.
What you are actually doing
Three numbers meet in a verification:
- What your utility charged you. You type this in from the account.
- What Augos measured. This comes from your own meter, at sixty second resolution.
- What your tariff says that consumption should have cost. The platform calculates this from the tariff scheme loaded against the point.
The verification puts number 3 next to number 1 and reports the gap as a variance. Number 2 is what makes the comparison credible: it is not an estimate, it is your own metered data.
A variance therefore tells you one of three things: the utility billed something other than what you used, the metering did not capture everything, or the tariff on the platform is not the tariff you are actually on. Working out which is the whole skill, and it is covered in Understanding a bill verification variance.
Before your first verification
Four things need to be true. Check them once, at the start, and most later problems disappear.
1. You are on a billing point. Verification only works on billing points. On a site with several measurement points, the billing point is usually the mains or the summation point, not a sub-meter. If the page will not open or the report errors, this is the first thing to check.
2. A tariff scheme is loaded, and it is the right one. Open the Bill Verification screen and look at the Tariff Scheme field. If it is blank, no scheme resolved and nothing will work until it is fixed. If it is populated but names a tariff you are not on, tell support when your tariff changed, because prior months will need recalculating from that date.
3. The billing period matches your utility's read cycle. If Augos is set to calendar months and your utility reads on the 19th, every verification compares two different windows and every variance is meaningless. Get this right before you capture anything.
4. You have the account itself, not a summary. For a tenanted site that may be a landlord recovery invoice plus a utilities schedule rather than a municipal account. That is fine, but say so, because the charge lines map differently.
The date rule
Periods run consecutively. No gaps, no overlaps.
The new period starts the day after the previous reading date.
That one rule is what the date picker is enforcing, and it is behind almost every "invalid date range" message. A combined account covering two months, or a gap of several months in your history, each need handling before you can capture at all. Date rules, and "invalid date range" covers each case, and the refresh worth trying first.
Capturing a bill
- Open Bill Verification for the measurement point.
- Add the bill for the period, entering the dates from the account.
- Enter the values, line by line, from the account:
- Consumption, split by time-of-use band where your tariff has one: peak, standard, off-peak. Watch the season; winter and summer rates differ.
- Demand, in kilovolt-amperes, where your tariff has a demand component.
- Each charge line: service charge, network access or capacity charge, generation capacity charge, any levy or subsidy line, reactive energy where it is billed.
- Save.
- Check the estimate figures populated. A report that saves with no estimate figures has not finished calculating, and until it has it will not print or download either. See a charge is missing, or the report saved but looks empty.
If a charge line has no field
The field only exists if that charge sits on your site's tariff scheme. There are three reasons it might not, and the fix is the same for all three — including re-issuing the months you have already verified without it. A charge is missing, or the report saved but looks empty works through it.
Reading the result
Variance = (Augos estimate − your bill) ÷ your bill.
A negative variance means the Augos estimate came out below what you were billed. That is the direction that matters commercially, and it is also the direction customers most often misread as their own capture error.
Do not conclude from one month. The shape across three months is what identifies the cause:
| Shape | Usually means |
|---|---|
| Consistent, same percentage, same direction | A current transformer ratio or polarity problem |
| Flips sign month to month, netting near zero | The utility read the meter some months and estimated others |
| One month badly out, the rest fine | The meter was offline during part of that reading period |
| Consumption agrees, cost does not | Tariff configuration, usually time-of-use period times |
| Appears at the tariff year boundary | The transitional bill, where fixed fees and consumption rates are applied on different bases |
Two charges that trip people up
Generation capacity charge. This is billed one way on a tariff that has a demand component and a different way on one that does not, which the charges on your bill explained sets out. If the day count on your verification does not match the account, check which kind of tariff you are on before assuming you captured it wrongly.
Reactive energy. The platform reads it, and it shows on the Power Factor page, but it does not always reach the verification. Why that happens, and what to do about it, is under a charge is missing, or the report saved but looks empty.
Doing it as a routine
The habit matters more than any single month.
- Verify every month, even when nothing looks wrong. A run of clean verifications is what makes a later overcharge provable.
- Start with six months at a new site, so the recent months have a baseline to sit against. A site that has never verified has nothing to compare against, which is exactly when a dispute arrives.
- After a metering fix, verify for two further months to establish a clean pattern. Periods contaminated by an outage or a phase loss should be set aside rather than argued over.
- Watch the automated variance emails. They arrive when a variance is found and when no bill has been captured for a period. See The automated bill verification emails.
If you would rather Augos did it
Email the account to support@augos.io and ask for the verification to be run. A
large share of this work is done that way, and it is a normal way to use the
service rather than an admission of defeat. You still get the report, and it still
builds the history.
Still stuck
Email support@augos.io with the point path, the period, the utility account
attached, and whether total consumption agrees with the account.