Vendor Billing Audits for a Nationwide Landscaping Company

Technology and utility billing audits remain a primary focus of RadiusPoint’s core expertise as we continue providing our clients’ best-in-class service level in Technology Expense Management and Utility Expense Management.  

A nationwide landscaping company with 500+ locations across the country hired RadiusPoint to provide our full suite of Utility Expense Management services: service optimization, vendor billing audits and expense management, to invoice processing & payment.

Problem

This landscaping organization offers a full breadth of landscaping services. When they hired RadiusPoint, their Accounts Payable staff was managing 1,300+ utility bills per month, a huge workload which made it impossible to perform utility billing audits accurately.

Challenge

Focusing on the manual processes is the first area of improvement the RadiusPoint team of experts target. This tasks involves a monthly billing audit during the payment process.  Billing audit not only ensures that any over-charges are identified and disputed, but also that the invoices are paid on time to avoid any disruption of services.

Optimization of all invoices —especially those in deregulated states— results in significant savings for our clients. Managing the day-to-day tasks of getting invoices processed and paid allows the client’s Accounts Payable staff to focus on their core services. Lastly, ensuring utility services are not interrupted through on-time bill processing and payment prevent business disruptions.

Solution

Errors and omissions in telecom and utility billing are inevitable. To make our vendor billing audit efficient, our business intelligence SaaS platform, ExpenseLogic, performs line item audits. In the TEM business, billing audits are implemented by wireline and wireless numbers, and by data circuits. In the UEM business, billing audits are performed by meter number, and type of service (electricity, gas, and trash). TEM and UEM billing audits keep vendor invoices error-free, a source of significant savings for our clients.

The RadiusPoint team makes billing error identification a priority, and reconciles data with vendors so that the latter return any over-charges and apply to our clients’ telecom and utility bills all applicable negotiated rates.

When errors are identified and reconciled with a vendor, a credit or refund situation is created in ExpenseLogic, avoiding future costs for the same services. Such charges are detailed and reported to our clients when the credit appears on the invoices or when the refund check is received.

Soft dollar savings were accomplished through alleviating the workload of the Accounts Payable staff, as RadiusPoint took over the management of all utility invoices and the AP Department could refocus on other value-adding tasks.

Each quarter, our team prepares a detailed report for each of our clients, using Key Performance Indicators to track spending levels and ROI measurements on our services. This helps our clients verify that their partnership with RadiusPoint is beneficial to their organization.

ExpenseLogic