The document discusses five alternatives to manually keying in utility bills: 1) Direct bills from vendors in flat file or EDI format, 2) Optical character recognition of paper bills, 3) Screen scraping data from vendor websites, 4) Outsourcing bill processing, and 5) Investing in a utility bill and energy management system like EnergyCAP. It provides considerations for each alternative and notes that EnergyCAP has over 30 years of experience in bill processing, energy reporting and analytics for organizations with many utility bills.

1. Five Alternatives to
Hand-Keying Your Utility Bills
©2014 EnergyCAP, Inc. ▪ @energycap ▪ #energyleader ▪ www.EnergyCAP.com

2. Key Questions to Ask

3. Key Questions to Ask

4. Key Questions to Ask

5. Key Questions to Ask

6. Alternative #1
Direct Bills from Vendor–Flat File

7. Typical formats are xls or csv

8. Generally post-payment
Files provided directly
from utility vendor

9. Considerations:
Format of data
Changes to format
Timing of delivery
Accuracy compared to A/P system
Automation and Workflow

10. Vendor:

11. Alternative #2
Direct Bills from Vendor–EDI 810

12. Format is ANSI standard EDI 810
Is the actual utility bill
Files provided directly from utility vendor

16. Considerations:
Paper invoice
Changes to format
Timing of delivery
Payment file format
Number of accounts
Cost

17. Vendor:

18. Alternative #3
Optical Character Recognition

19. Common name is OCR
Software used to create digital files
Converts image (pdf, jpeg, etc.) into
digital file (xls, csv)

21. Considerations:
Paper invoice
Vector based file is best
Document management system
Automation and Workflow
Timing of delivery
Cost

22. Vendor:

23. Alternative #4
Screen Scraping

24. Extract data from vendor websites
Uses website login credentials
Proprietary process to scrape data from
website and deliver in a digital file

26. Considerations:
Data quality
Vendor availability
Login credentials
Automation and Workflow
Timing of delivery
Cost

27. Vendor:

28. Alternative #5
Outsource Bill Processing

29. Service company that processes utility
bills, among providing other services
Reroute bills to service company
Service company manually enters bills
directly into ECAP or provides import file

31. Considerations:
Data quality
Bill payment
Account open/close services
Headcount
Additional services
Cost

32. Vendor:

33. Suggestion:
Invest in a utility bill and energy
management system to make
this process better.

34. All solutions can be managed and
contracted by EnergyCAP, Inc. through

35. Presented by EnergyCAP, Inc.
EnergyCAP is used by organizations that receive many utility
bills for bill processing, energy reporting and analytics
Over 30 years as industry leader; first release in 1982.
(The predecessor software was FASER Energy Accounting).
Web-based and on-premise versions
Financially secure. No debt. No VC funds.
EnergyCAP software is all we do—we don’t sell hardware,
retrofits, consulting, bill payment outsourcing, procurement.

36. 1,500 organizations use EnergyCAP.
City Government (San Francisco, Baltimore, Sacramento,
Virginia Beach, Tampa, Denver, Jacksonville, Oklahoma City,
Cleveland)
County Government (Orange, Riverside, Santa Barbara CA;
Loudoun, Fairfax, Chesterfield VA; Miami Dade, Charlotte FL)
Federal (USMC, Smithsonian, U.S. Dept of Energy Labs)
Commercial (Ryder, Equity Residential, Forest City, BJs
Wholesale Clubs, CBRE, Northrop Grumman)
Education (800+ school districts, SUNY system, Univ of CA
system, UCF, Univ of Kansas)