How does EnergyCAP know what Billing Period Month the Bill is For?
It's important in EnergyCAP to accurately DATE cost and consumption data. This ensures that expenses and use are tracked correctly in time-related graphs and charts. For most utility bills this is easy to do because the Start Date and End Date defined for the utility billing period clearly fall in one month or another.
Many EnergyCAP graphs, charts, and reports display utility billing data based on the Billing Period. When you have a bill that is dated, say, June 15 to July 15, selecting the proper Billing Period can be complicated. In terms of monthly reporting, is it a June bill or a July bill? And what about quarterly billing, and so on. How does EnergyCAP decide?
The goals are:
- To avoid having gaps in Billing Periods when there are no gaps in the billing dates and
- To avoid having more than one bill in the same Billing Period.
To accomplish these two goals, EnergyCAP uses a series of logical rules to determine the billing period month of each bill, regardless of whether it is manually keyed OR imported:
The 'default' rule is that EnergyCAP 'splits the difference' between the Start Date and End Date for the billing period; the middle of the period marks the billing period month.
If the number of days in the billing period is greater than 45, then the 'default' logic is still used.
However, IF the billing period is LESS than 45 days, then a second logical step is applied.
- IF the default rule results in a billing period month being skipped, and
- IF the 'middle-of-the-bill' date is equal to or less than the 5th of the default month, and
- IF the bill Start Date is earlier than Day 1 of the 'default' month,
THEN: The billing period month will be moved back one month.
Similarly, when there ALREADY exists a bill for THIS month AND the 'middle-of-the-bill' date is equal to or greater than the 26th of THIS month, AND the billing period End Date is greater than Day 1 of the NEXT month, then the billing period will be moved forward a month.
