A Utility Bill Audit Isn’t Enough!

If you do a quick Internet search for “utility audit,” hundreds of results will immediately appear, listing companies that offer the service. Look a bit closer at these listings, and you’ll notice that almost all these companies do “utility bill auditing.” This means the company will review one or more years of your utility bills for billing errors, and may recommend a lower-tier rate plan.

A utility bill audit may be able to spot an error and gain your organization a one-time refund — but it’s an incomplete audit. Why? Looking at utility bills only provides partial information about your organization’s utility usage and what you’re actually paying for. To get the entire picture, an onsite utility inspection of your business or association’s common area can reveal what the utility bills miss. In fact, this is where most utility errors are discovered.

Often-missed utility errors

An onsite utility inspection may find many different types of errors, such as these:

• Your association or business is being billed for meters or street lights on another utility customer’s site.
• You’re being charged for unnecessary equipment and services.
• Your utility provider is applying incorrect rates. (i.e. billed as residential client instead of commercial client, billed gas rate for water heating only instead of water heating, space heating, and cooking, etc.)
• You’re being billed incorrectly for utility services. (i.e. billed for 4” water meter instead of 2” water meter, paying sewer fees for irrigation water, etc.)

An onsite audit is part of Pacific Utility Audit’s unique services. This comprehensive audit involves conducting a thorough inspection of a business or association’s property and facilities to verify every utility meter, trash bin, and street light on the property. This detailed verification process, coupled with a review of your organization’s utility bills and rate schedules, has saved many of our association and business clients thousands of dollars in refunds and rate reductions.

Utility auditing companies that look over your utility invoices are a dime a dozen. Pacific Utility Audit takes it a step further. As the only utility auditing company on the West Coast that conducts onsite inspections, we are likely to return a lot more in savings to your business or association’s reserves.