Auditing to Review Data

The Quick Check Audit checks for large data entry errors.  Additional Audit Groups can be created to review specific data or to provide a more stringent check of the entered information.

There are two different ways to select bills that you want to audit, based upon your Work Flow Wizard settings:

• If you have turned on the Bill Approval option, all saved bills will be placed in the Unapproved folder within the Work Flow Manager\Bill folder
• If you are not using the Bill Approval option, the saved bills will appear in the Last Thirty Days folder within the Work Flow Manager\Bill folder (this folder may have a different name, such as Within Last 7 Days, depending on what Options you selected from the Work Flow Manager).

1. Navigate to the Audit Manager (Analysis > Audits) in EnergyCAP.
2. From the Audit menu, select  New > Group OR right click on the Audit Groups node of the tree view and select New Group from the popup menu.
3. Enter a Code and Display for the Audit Group.  As this will be an Audit Group used to more closely review the entered bill data, you may want to make the Code = REVIEWDATA and the Display = Review Data.
   
4. Select the Audit Group node on the tree. Click the New Audit button, located in the top right corner of the screen, and select the audit or audits desired when reviewing the data. Audit #46 may be run again with tighter variance, or several individual audits may be included, such as:
1. Audit #09 – Use/Day Exceeds Last Year
2. Audit #10 – Cost/Day Exceeds Last Year
3. Audit #28 – Consecutive Zero Bill Use
4. Audit #34 – Abnormal Bill Period Length
5. Audit #35 – Bill Load Factor
6. Audit #38 – Cost/Unit Exceeds Last Year.
5. As you save the audits to the Audit Group, review the variance settings, shown in the Settings Tab, to determine if variances should be adjusted.
   
   
   NOTE: If audit variances have been set at the account or meter level (Properties > Audits), these lower-level variances will take priority over group variance settings.
6. OPTIONAL: If using the Bill Approval option, the Workflow must be altered to accommodate it:
1. From the Workflow Manager, go to the Tools menu and select the Workflow Wizard option.
2. On the third page of the Workflow Wizard (shown below), select Use bill approval system option. We highly recommend that if you are using the Bill Approval System, that you also select to Confirm edit/delete of approved bills
   NOTE: EnergyCAP, Inc. recommends initially using the Bill Approval System in manual mode (no automatic bill approval) to understand and appreciate how many and what kinds of bills are being tagged with a Bill Message.  During the initial use of the combined Bill Approval System and audits, it may be necessary to adjust the variance settings to reduce the number of 'false alarms.' Once you are comfortable with the variance settings, you may choose the Enable automatic approval process Work Flow option.
   
   The Enable automatic approval process option allows you to setup an audit group whose results will determine if the bill is approved or not.  The settings of this feature are:
1. Audit Group – Choose the audit group that contains the audits you would like to use in determining if the bill is approved or not.
2. Severity Level – Choose the severity that will act as the cutoff for bill approval.  Example:  Selecting a severity of Low would mean that ONLY bills that either pass all the audits or have an audit problem with a severity of Low or Pass will be approved.  All other severity settings will leave the audit Unapproved. Click for more information on Audit Severities.
3. Perform Audits Automatically – Choose the time at which the audit group is to be run against the bill.  It is recommended that the audits are run After Entry or After Batch.  After Batch would be preferable if you are also using a Quick Check audit group as part of your Work Flow Manager settings.
7. The process to execute an Audit Group to audit selected bills is the same whether you are using the Bill Approval System or not. If you are using the Bill Approval System, you will navigate to the Unapproved folder within the Work Flow Manager\Bill folder to begin the process. Otherwise, navigate to the Last Thirty Days folder within the Work Flow Manager\Bill folder in the Accounting module to begin the process.
8. When you select the appropriate folder, bill records should appear in the top right window.
9. In this window, the Column Headers can be used to sort the bill records quickly. For example, if you are primarily concerned with auditing bills with a monthly cost over $5,000, you can click on the Cost column header to sort the bills in descending cost order. Click on the Cost column header again to sort the bills in ascending cost order.
10. Select the bill records you want to audit by clicking on the first bill record and using the shift+click or ctrl+click functions to select multiple records.
    
11. Right-click on a highlighted bill record, then select the Audit option from the menu.
12. Select which Audit Group you desire to execute. Enable the Show results option, if you would like EnergyCAP to provide you with a list of bill records that failed an audit once the Audit Group has finished executing. Click the OK button to execute the Audit Group.
    
13. Bill records that fail an audit will be copied to the Problem folder within the Work Flow Manager\Bill folder.
14. Navigate to the Problem folder and select a bill record to determine which audit(s) it failed.  Any Bill Messages and Audit results will be listed in the lower right-hand window.
15. Double-click on the bill record in the top right-hand window to view the bill entry screen and begin resolving the problem. If you edit the bill while resolving the problem, right-click on the bill record and select the Mark problems fixed option from the menu. This will allow EnergyCAP to re-audit the bill to confirm that the problem has been fixed. If you determine that there is a valid reason why the bill is out of variance, or that the bill amount is too small to bother with, right click on the bill and select the Mark problems ignore option from the menu. This will tell EnergyCAP to ignore this problem bill when executing the audit that the bill initially failed.
16. Once you have marked the Problem bills as being fixed or ignored, return to either the Unapproved or the Last Thirty Days folder.
17. Select the bill records again and execute the Audit Group to confirm that the fixed bill records now pass the audits. If not, return to the Problem folder, edit the bill, and either enter a Bill Message and/or create a Bill Issue detailing the issue.
18. If using the Bill Approval System, select the bill records within the Unapproved folder that have either passed the audits or have been marked to ignore the audit results. Right-click one of these selected bill records, and select the Approve option from the pop-up menu. These bills are now available to be reported on.
19. If not using the Bill Approval System, leave the bill records in the Last Thirty Days folder. These bills will disappear from the folder when their Date Created is more than 30 days prior to today’s date (based on the system date of the computer).