The process of utility bill collection, processing, validation, and payment is one of the most time-consuming tasks for the employees in the accounts payable department of the companies. Usually, the sites have four utility accounts, at the least. And as the business grows and sites increase in number, the resources needed to manage this complex and much more difficult process become strained.
This is why streamlining this process through a tool, namely utility bill management (UBM) that is also known as utility expense management (UEM), is crucial for businesses.
Utility bill management vs. utility bill automation
Utility bill management is the process that removes manual data handling from the process and allows businesses to make faster and wiser decisions, save money and allow employees to focus their time and effort on more productive activities. It automates the process of utility bill collection, validation, and payment, ensuring that data is generated in real-time.
The automated system ensures that utility data is directly inputted into the system after collection, validation, and reporting. This can apply to all utilities, including business electricity, gas, telecommunication, and water. Utility bill automation adds more efficiency to the process of utility bill management.
What will it include?
Utility bill management will cover
· Automated collection of bills
· Automated validation of invoice
· Identify and alert you regarding billing issues, missing bills, duplicate bills, and late-arriving bills
· Manages and priorities late notices
· Shows total money spent and total consumption
· Gives notifications from suppliers
· It gives a list of contract prices
· Generates clear and accurate reports
· Generates user-friendly data visualization
· Automated accurate and timely payments to suppliers
· Allows easy budgeting and predicting
Why use utility bill management?
Without automation, it can take a lot of time before your company can access the utility bills. This usually results in businesses making decisions based on old data and thus failing to respond to issues on time. Utility bill management can prevent this by automating the process and allowing you to get fast data reports to make decisions in real-time.
So who benefits from this? Utility bill management will lower the burden on your accounts payable department and allow your employees to focus their time and effort on high return activities. It has been shown to save around 14 days of manual processing every month.
Moreover, utility bill collection, processing, validation, and payment process generate accurate and higher quality data and increase transparency and efficiency. This allows teams to review the data and better address issues and budget accordingly.
In a nutshell
If your business is a fast-growing one, utility bill management is a must to improve efficiency. It will streamline the process of utility bill collection, processing, validation, and payment and thus allow your employees to focus their time and effort towards more productive and profiting tasks. Moreover, with rapid data generation, you can gain insights into your energy consumption and utility usage issues that can be resolved in real-time. Not only will it improve efficiency but also help you make wiser and faster decisions.