By Sharon Watkins, Founder and CEO, RadiusPoint
Prove TEM savings with hard refunds, documented rate cuts on live services, and eliminated inventory, while labeling avoidance separately so finance never sees inflated totals. The reason this matters is simple. A Controller has sat through too many savings decks that fall apart on the second question. A headline number lands, someone asks how it was calculated, and half of it turns out to be avoidance annualized on optimistic assumptions. Once that happens, every future number your telecom expense management programme reports gets quietly discounted.
Key Takeaways
This is the entire method in one place: separate the three buckets, evidence every line, label avoidance honestly, and hand audit a re-performable ledger.
- Hard savings are cash refunds and permanent bill reductions tied to a BAN and an invoice period.
- Avoidance is real but different, because it’s spend prevented, not cash hitting the ledger.
- Inflated avoidance, the habit of counting every hypothetical, destroys credibility with Controllers faster than a missed number ever will.
- Evidence packs need before and after rates, inventory IDs, carrier credit memos, and GL impact.
- RadiusPoint structures savings reporting from ExpenseLogic audit work so finance can re-perform the logic without a meeting.
Hard savings versus avoidance versus soft claims
Hard savings change cash or recurring bills, avoidance prevents spend, and soft claims without BAN-level evidence do not belong in a finance packet.
The difference isn’t academic. It decides which line a Controller will defend to an auditor and which line gets struck before the report leaves the building. Sort every claimed saving into one of three buckets. We call it the Three-Bucket Savings Model, and it’s the first thing that goes on any RadiusPoint savings report.
| Bucket | What it is | Evidence it needs | How it hits finance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hard savings | Cash refunds and credits, plus a bill you were paying that permanently drops, such as a disconnected service that stops billing | Carrier credit memo, or the before and after invoice on the same BAN and service ID | Real money: cash returned, or a lower recurring invoice from now on |
| Negotiated recurring savings | A contracted or optimised rate that lowers a live, still-billed service every cycle | Signed rate exhibit tied to the service ID, showing the old rate and the new rate | Lower recurring cost for as long as the service stays active at the new rate |
| Avoidance | Spend you prevented that never reached an invoice, such as an order you stopped or a plan you right-sized before it billed | A dated decision with the quantified basis behind it | Budget protected, but no cash moves and no invoice drops |
Soft claims are everything else: productivity, hours saved, general efficiency. They can be true and still not belong in the savings total, because finance can’t reconcile them to a BAN. Put them in the narrative, not the number. The cleanest hard-savings line is a recovered credit, which is the core of telecom refund recovery, and it’s also the line auditors accept most easily, because a credit memo is a document a carrier issued, not a calculation you performed.
Where programmes inflate numbers and how to stop
Inflation happens when one-time credits are annualized forever, baseline rates are fictional, or disconnected services get double-counted as both a refund and ongoing avoidance.
None of these require dishonesty. They usually come from a spreadsheet that was built to look impressive rather than to survive review. Each has a fix, and the fix is always the same shape: anchor the number to evidence and count it once.
| Anti-pattern | Why it inflates | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Annualizing a one-time credit forever | A large refund is year-one cash, not a recurring saving. Carrying it into year two and three invents money that never returns | Book one-time credits once, in the period they post. Only recurring rate and inventory changes carry forward |
| Fictional baselines | Claiming a percentage saved against a list price you never actually paid | Baseline against the contracted or previously billed rate on the same service ID |
| Double-counting a disconnect | Claiming the refund for past overbilling and also claiming ongoing avoidance on the same dead service | Count the credit as hard savings once, then count the stopped recurring charge as a recurring reduction, never both, and never a third time as avoidance |
| Counting every hypothetical | Treating every plan you could theoretically change as avoidance already banked | Only count avoidance tied to a real, dated decision that actually happened |
The common root is missing evidence. A disciplined line-item telecom audit is what produces the credit memos, rate exhibits, and disconnect confirmations that keep each number anchored to something a carrier or a contract can confirm. Without that evidence, a programme is left estimating, and estimates drift upward until the first hard question exposes them.
Evidence Controllers accept
Controllers accept credit memos, rate exhibits tied to service IDs, disconnect confirmations, and GL postings that reconcile cleanly to the savings story you are telling.
Everything else is a claim awaiting proof, and a Controller will treat it that way. The evidence pack behind a defensible savings report is short and specific:
- Carrier credit memos with case numbers, matched to the BAN and to the invoice that carried the credit.
- Before and after invoices on the same service ID, comparing like periods, so a rate change is visible rather than asserted.
- Signed rate exhibits or contract amendments showing the old rate and the new rate.
- Disconnect confirmations from the carrier, not just the internal disconnect order, since an order raised is not a service removed.
- GL postings that show the credit or the reduced charge landing in the correct cost center and period.
- The inventory of record, dated, showing the service removed from what you own.
This is why credible savings reporting is a byproduct of a real invoice auditing service, not a quarter-end spreadsheet exercise. The audit generates the documents. The report only has to organise them and point each one at the line it supports.
A savings ledger finance can re-perform
Keep a ledger carrying BAN, service ID, savings type, monthly impact, start date, and owner, so audit can re-perform each line without a slide deck.
Internal Audit should pick any row, pull evidence, redo the arithmetic, and reach the same number. The Re-Performable Ledger uses these fields:
| Field | What it holds | Why audit needs it |
|---|---|---|
| BAN | The billing account number the saving sits under | Ties the line to a real, billable account |
| Service ID | The specific circuit, line, or service affected | Prevents double-counting across overlapping claims |
| Savings type | Hard, negotiated recurring, or avoidance | Keeps the three buckets from blending into one total |
| Monthly and one-time impact | Recurring dollars per month, and any one-time credit held separately | Stops a one-time refund from being annualized |
| Baseline reference | The contracted or previously billed rate used | Kills fictional baselines |
| Start date and end condition | When it began, and what stops it counting | A rate reduction stops when the service disconnects or the contract changes |
| Evidence link and owner | The credit memo or exhibit, and the named person accountable | Makes the line re-performable and someone answerable for it |
How RadiusPoint reports savings from ExpenseLogic work
RadiusPoint ties refund recovery and optimisation outcomes to inventory and invoices inside ExpenseLogic, so every reported saving stays traceable when finance reviews it.
ExpenseLogic holds inventory, rate tables, and invoice history together, while RadiusPoint analysts pursue carrier disputes, track credits, and update moves, adds, changes, and disconnects. That combination lets a Controller trace each saving to a BAN and period.
Published client outcomes illustrate the rule, not a guarantee. One Fortune 100 manufacturer recovered $450,000 in first-year telecom refunds and moved to $850,000 in ongoing annual savings. The refund is one-time hard savings; the $850,000 carries forward only while rates remain lower. A client also achieved $120,000 a year through contract rate optimisation, a negotiated recurring line. Other reported outcomes include a healthcare provider’s 26% telecom expense reduction and a food service company’s 22% wireless reduction after mobility auditing. Each must be labeled by bucket.
Frequently Asked Questions
These are the questions finance and Internal Audit ask most about a TEM savings report, answered the way a Controller would want them answered.
Should avoidance appear in the same total as hard savings?
No. Show both, labeled separately, and never blend them into one headline number without a footnote that says which part is cash and which part is prevented spend. The moment they merge, the whole figure inherits the credibility of its weakest line.
How long can a rate reduction count?
Count a rate reduction for as long as the service stays active at the new rate. Stop counting it the moment the service disconnects or the contract changes again. A saving on a service that no longer exists is not a saving.
What baseline should we use?
Use the contracted or previously billed rate on the same service ID. Don’t baseline against a market rate or a list price you never actually paid, because that manufactures savings no invoice ever reflected.
Do category benchmarks like typical year-one TEM reductions help?
Only as context, and only with attribution. Organisations implementing telecom expense management often see 15% to 30% first-year reductions, but that’s a Gartner figure about the category in general, not a RadiusPoint guarantee. Present it as background, never as your own projected result.
Who signs the savings report?
Telecom, or the TEM programme owner, prepares it. Finance validates the material lines against the evidence. Internal Audit may sample. Shared ownership across those three roles is what makes the number credible, because no single party both produces and blesses it.
The short version for finance
Report hard and negotiated recurring savings as your headline, keep avoidance labeled and footnoted, and hand audit a ledger it can re-perform without you.
That discipline is the difference between a number finance defends and one it discounts. Re-sort last quarter’s report into three buckets. Anything without a BAN, service ID, and carrier evidence belongs in a footnote until supported. That is the work RadiusPoint does through ExpenseLogic.