GRP Services - Utility Cost Recovery: The Process

To make the best use of your time and ours, we conduct a preliminary assessment of your utility services, suppliers, contracts and associated expenses. This profile enables us to identify the areas with the greatest potential. We will review this with you and recommend the best strategy for approaching the audit.

GRP Services prepares a spreadsheet showing each utility bill to be included in the audit along with the account number, service provider, type of service purchased, date of bill and amount of bill. The total provides an estimate of the monthly spending to be reviewed. This spreadsheet also serves as a basis for Status Reports as the audit moves forward.

We also prepare a list of all other information and documents provided to us and describe any open items.

When the audit begins, we obtain a brief letter from a senior manager of your organization in support of the audit to be submitted to senior management of your utility service providers. This improves the likelihood that when claims for refunds are submitted, they will be resolved in a timely manner. When significant refund potential is identified, service providers may slow down their response or fail to respond at all. Having the audit acknowledged at a higher level in the organization helps to prevent this.

Telecommunications bills frequently lack the level of detail we need to begin the audit. If this is the case, we contact your telecommunications services providers to request this billing detail. For example, every telecommunications circuit, whether used for voice or data communications, has multiple billing elements that make up the circuit charge, but these are not shown on the typical monthly bill.

Some utility service providers request that you sign a contract to purchase services. These contracts either provide rates that you will be charged or make reference to tariff rates from which you may be receiving a different percentage discount for each different type of service you are purchasing. The tariff referenced in your contract is not provided to you.

The contract may also reference credits that are to take effect when certain call volume criteria are met or at specific points within the contract period.

We note any ambiguities or contradictions in the contract language and develop questions for the telecommunications service provider. As we progress through the audit, we continually refer back to the contract.

We maintain an historical library of utility carrier tariffs covering the past 10+ years. In many cases you can no longer request these documents from your service providers.

We also subscribe to an on-line rate and tariff service, enabling us to research rates from any major utility service provider. We check the rates on your bills against all applicable tariffs.

As with contract language, tariff language is often ambiguous and contradictory. Our experience enables us to bring this to bear on your behalf, with significant refunds often resulting.

Once we have completed the initial contract and tariff review, we will contact your Utility service provider Account Executive. From there, we may be put in touch with billing or contract specialists to obtain answers to our questions.

The success of the Utility Bill Audit can hinge upon your willingness to support us should we uncover a case of significant over-billing. If the service provider thinks that there will be no consequences, they may try to ignore our requests for refunds.

If necessary to ensure that all Utility facilities for which you are billed are actually in place we identify records of on-site Utility facilities against which the bills can be validated. If needed, we send a Utility technician to your site to conduct a facilities inventory. This is scheduled in advance at your convenience. If you have an in–house technician, we may request that he be present or available when we visit to respond any questions we may have.

Once we have completed our initial review, we may discover that pertinent information was not obtained in the data collection. For example, during our inventory, we may find a group of outside lines for which we have no telecommunications bill, so we will provide the line numbers to you to see if a bill can be located.

Some errors may be readily apparent. In these cases we assign a claim number to the error and submit the claim for over-billing to the service provider. When we provide you with a Status Report you will see claim numbers, the service provider to whom they have been submitted, the date submitted, the nature of the billing error and the potential amount of the refund. Other claims may be to question items that may ultimately turn out to be errors, but need further investigation. In some instances, the refunds we obtain on your behalf will be due to an interpretation of ambiguous or contradictory language in a contract or tariff. Some of these may be based upon precedents that our auditors have established on previous audits. In these instances, a considerable amount of negotiation, either in person or by telephone, is typically needed before the service provider agrees that there is a billing error. Some claims are submitted for errors as they are uncovered within the contract and tariff review periods. Other claims result from errors found during the records validation process.

In some instances, after we have submitted a claim stating that circuits on your bill are not in place, the telecommunications service provider conducts its own site inventory for verification. If the claim is for a significant amount, we may send our representative to be present at this inventory assessment to ensure that lines we did not find do not mysteriously reappear or lines that we found to be not working are repaired.

Once a claim for over-billing has been submitted to your Utility service provider, we establish a rapport with the individual who is responsible for approving the claim and computing the amount of the refund. The amount of the refund is in part dependent upon the relationship we have established with this representative.

We keep in touch with the representative on a regular basis by telephone to ensure that the claims we have submitted are moving forward. Most providers of local Utility service have a separate division (usually a small group of people) that we work with on these claims. They typically have a considerable backlog, so there can be a delay between the time we submit a claim on your behalf and the point at which the claim is acted upon. In the case of a claim submitted another carrier of voice or data communications, we submit the claims to your Account Executive who may, in turn, relay them to your billing representatives.

Once we are advised that a claim has been accepted and a refund is pending, we will report this to you. We review the computation used to arrive at the refund amount and provide you with an estimate if we are reasonably certain of the amount.

A refund may be in the form of a check made out to your organization or a credit on your bill. We attempt to obtain a check since this tends to be preferred by corporate managers. In some cases there will be a refund check with additional amounts credited to a bill. The check or copy of your bill showing the credit will be sent to us. This is the point at which we prepare and deliver our invoice to you and submit it along with the check or copy of the credit, along with a brief explanation of the basis for the refund.

Usually a refund also results in a monthly cost reduction when your bill is corrected. If we observe other telecommunications cost reduction opportunities outside the Scope of this proposal, we will bring them to your attention for further discussion.

After the initial Start Up report, we will provide you with regular status reports. In between status reports, we will call you if we need additional information or if a refund is obtained on your behalf. The nature of the audit process is that there may be periods when nothing is happening, as we may be waiting for a response from your service providers on claims or questions we have submitted. Once a refund has been agreed to, there may also be a period of time before the actual check or credit is received.

The Status Report will show the results of the audit to date in terms of refunds and pending claims for refunds.

An audit may take several months or more depending upon the complexity of your billing and the errors found. When we believe your audit is complete, we will prepare a final report summarizing the results and showing the amounts of refunds and associated savings achieved on your behalf.