7 Drawbacks of Manual Utility Bill Data Entry

Manual data entry

Most companies engage in manual data entry in some form. One area manual data entry is prevalent is in energy management. Although it is essentially ubiquitous, the process consists of an abundance of glaring inefficiencies. The reason manual data entry has infiltrated most organizations is that, up until a few years ago, there was no other option for collecting and cataloguing energy data, which could only be received via paper or pdf documents.

The following slides showcase 7 drawbacks of manual data entry of utility bills.

Delays

With a manual data entry process, 30 to 45 days can pass from the time a utility provider reads a meter to the time a large company’s corporate headquarters has enough energy data in its system to begin analysis and reporting. Typically, each of the locations — which could be in the thousands — a large company operates has its own utility account.

Once a utility company reads the meter associated with one store location, two-and-a-half days may pass before the bill is even printed at the utility’s site. After printing, a store manager receives the bill in the mail about 17 to 28 days later.

1

Delays

Upon receipt of the utility bill, the manager generally scans it and reviews and enters the most critical data points into a field system, which is independent of the corporate office’s database, within a 48-hour window. An accountant in the corporate office is then tasked with gathering the information from the field system and transferring it into the corporate headquarters database system, which may take between two and four days from the time the data is entered into the field system.

With delays in the utility billing process, a company may have only 70% of its total energy data a month or more after the initial meter read. Oftentimes, historical data must be used as a supplement for the missing utility information in order to conduct analysis within a reasonable time frame.

1

Delays

Losing over a month of time can be detrimental to a company’s bottom line, as it prevents executives from spotting anomalies in energy usage and increases the difficulty of managing energy consumption and cost in individual locations. Automated utility data feeds directly into corporate systems on average three days from the time the utility provider reads the meter. The bill information is pulled a maximum of one day after the read and is delivered to the customer in the next two days, which is over ten times faster than manual data entry. With a quicker process, accounting professionals can avoid paying late fees, which saves thousands of dollars on high ticket invoices.

1

High Costs

The full manual data entry process can cost up to $11.63 per bill due to expenses such as printing, scanning, writing checks, and coding. This collection process quickly becomes a top line item in a company’s expenditures. An organization with 3,000 different utility bills coming in each month may be spending $400,000 annually just to gather and organize energy data.

According to Groom Energy, data acquisition can use 50% of energy management project budgets. Automating this procedure costs $1 – $2 per bill, which holds the potential to dramatically decrease a company’s expenses.

2

Decreased Productivity & Employee Dissatisfaction

Companies that include manual data entry in their operations may hire data entry specialists or portion off some of these responsibilities onto analysts. Data entry specialists, burdened with entering information for hundreds of bills per day, often become less productive and burnout as time goes on due to the repetitive nature of the work.

Additionally, analysts who are required to take on manual data entry must divert time away from forecasting, reporting, and other higher level work.

3

Inconsistent & Inaccurate Data

The most common source of data inaccuracy is human error, resulting from manually keying in data incorrectly. Entering data into a system manually can lead to a 3% error rate, which proves costly when handling a plethora of utility accounts and transactions. These initial missteps carry adverse impacts further down the line on energy budgeting, future consumption estimations, and procurement. With a host of new tariffs and billing structures entering the market, the likelihood of errors will increase.

4

Inconsistent & Inaccurate Data

Furthermore, it is difficult to track the source of an error in a manual data entry process. Reasons for inaccuracies include human error due to incorrect value entry, human error due to incorrect mapping, and utility billing mistakes. When an error is detected, sifting back through each previous procedure is an arduous task, especially when the only source of original documentation is a physical paper copy of the bill in a distant location.

4

Incomplete Data

Employees involved in manual data entry often only gather the information from the most critical fields to success due to time pressures. Additionally, data entry specialists are incentivized to collect fewer data points because having fewer data targets per statement keeps the error rate lower. They generally capture about 10 – 25 out of the total of about 125 distinct data points.

5

Carbon Emissions

Carbon dioxide emissions are associated with a number of steps in the manual data entry process including paper production, printing, and transportation. Reducing the frequency and size of utility bill shipments can help lower the greenhouse gases generated from this process. As a matter of fact, the pulp and paper manufacturing industry is one of the world’s largest users of energy and emitters of greenhouse gases and transportation represents a whopping 32% of carbon emissions in the U.S.

6

Physical Record Keeping

Surprisingly, some companies actually pay monthly fees to keep boxes filled with paper copies of utility invoices in public storage units. This archaic form of record keeping is not only expensive but also location specific, making access for employees out of the area difficult.

7

What’s the alternative?

With an array of drawbacks, manual data entry is outdated and prevents timely, top-notch energy management at scale. Missing chances to boost revenue and cut costs is common when actions are based on old, incomplete information.

Obtain your utility bill data through Urjanet’s automated feed and get data that is:

● Near real-time. Urjanet’s platform extracts utility bill and interval data as soon as it is posted by the utility.

● Cost-effective. We can process bills at a fraction of the cost of manual data entry.

● Accurate and Complete. Our quality assurance process spans over 150 distinct data audits. We can also pull every data element on a bill, which can include up to 120 different data points.

For more information, check out our blog post:

http://urjanet.com/manual-data-entry-dirty-little-secrets-energy-management/