Understanding a bill verification variance
A variance is not automatically a problem, and it is not automatically your mistake. The shape of the variance tells you what caused it. Work through the list below before concluding anything, and never conclude from a single month.
Read the shape
| What the variance looks like | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Consistent, roughly the same percentage, always the same direction | A current transformer ratio or polarity problem. Something is scaling wrong. |
| Flips sign month to month, averaging out to near zero over three months | The utility or landlord is billing on estimated readings and correcting them afterwards. Normal. |
| One month badly out, the rest fine | Check whether the meter was offline during part of that reading period. |
| Consumption agrees but cost does not | Tariff configuration, usually time-of-use period times. Not a metering problem. |
| Appears at the tariff year boundary | The transitional bill, where the utility mixes new fixed fees with pro-rated consumption rates. |
| Only on the demand line | Check for a data spike first, then compare the demand line directly against the account. |
The check order
- Rule out spikes on the Augos side. Support does this first, so the request for your invoice arrives with a finding attached rather than as a fishing expedition.
- Check the billing period matches the utility's read cycle. If it does not, the comparison is between two different windows and the number means nothing.
- Check the meter's publishing history for the period. An outage inside the reading period silently invalidates that month's verification. This is the single most common cause of a tenant believing a landlord has overcharged.
- Check the tariff scheme against the actual account. Customers change tariff without telling their metering provider. If the Tariff Scheme field on the verification screen is blank, that is the tell.
- Ask for three consecutive months. One month proves nothing. Three shows you whether the variance is a trend or noise.
What a clean investigation looks like
Where the meter is innocent, Augos will say so with evidence: no spikes in the interval data, any genuine supply outages identified with their timestamps and the demand spike that follows a restart, total consumption in line with prior months, and a multi-period variance history against the industry tolerance. If a utility appears to have under-billed you, expect advice to accrue for a possible retrospective adjustment.
What to do
- Email
support@augos.iowith the point path, the month, and the utility or landlord account attached. - Say whether total consumption agrees with the account.
- If you can, send three consecutive months rather than one.
Good to know
- Keep running monthly verifications even when nothing looks wrong. That is what makes a genuine overcharge claimable later.
- A verification can balance while one phase is down, if the loss started part way through the period. A balanced verification is not proof that the metering is healthy.
- Where a period is contaminated by an outage, ask support to tell you explicitly which reading periods are affected, and run two further months to establish a clean baseline.
Still stuck
Email support@augos.io with the point path, three consecutive utility accounts,
and whether total consumption agrees.