A new and improved gross margin reporting solution improves data accuracy and reduces complexity.
With utilities increasingly under pressure to minimise costs and maximise operational efficiency, gross margin is a key metric to monitor. Accurate monthly gross margin reporting is crucial to assess financial health, adjust processes and pricing, and maintain profitability. However, variables in pricing, as well as in wholesale and third party costs can make this process complex and time consuming. This is further complicated by the fact that data is often distributed across different sources, and presented in a variety of formats.
To simplify month-end close for utilities and provide accurate and reliable gross margin reporting, ENSEK has launched a new and improved Gross Margin Reporting module. The product, originally introduced to the market a decade ago as a first-of-its kind solution, has been redesigned to offer greater scalability without compromising on performance. This will deliver a vastly improved user experience, addressing utilities’ changing needs as they scale and expand their operations and customer base.
The result is a unique product that provides data on revenues, costs and margins at the finest level of detail. Features include the possibility to fully automate unbilled revenue postings, integrating them with energy suppliers’ financial accounting systems for seamless data processing. The product also provides a full billing reconciliation, thanks to a comprehensive margin assurance framework that clearly identifies margin leakage.
New features for extreme scalability
The Gross Margin Reporting product includes two components: a non-half hourly electricity gross margin model, and a gas non-daily metered gross margin model. Each features:
- Daily model outputs refresh
- A portfolio built from industry data flows with full reconciliation to Ignition
- Profiled industry volumes at a meter and register level for all periods of supply
- Expected revenues based on industry volumes and product details from Ignition
- Full meter-level reconciliation of billed volume and values to industry volume and expected revenue
- Calculation of unbilled revenue based on expected revenue for periods not yet billed
- Ageing of unbilled revenue
- Inclusion of charges created in Ignition but not yet issued on a bill
- 100% reconciliation of billing in the models to the Ignition sales ledger
- Built-in controls to demonstrate data accuracy
Enhanced accuracy and streamlined month-end operations
ENSEK’s Gross Margin Reporting solution can gather data from a wide variety of sources and processes – such as customer data, billing data and product information from Ignition, as well as industry flow data. It then presents it in a standardised way to help consolidate financial accounting, improve data accuracy and prevent human error.
The new Gross Margin Reporting solution also allows utilities to improve margins by identifying instances of over settlement or under-billing.
To further improve accuracy, the product provides fully auditable unbilled revenue calculations at a meter level, a simplified unbilled revenue provisioning process, and data to assess the certainty of billed and unbilled revenue.
The new product is backed by ENSEK’s Energy Accounting service, which provides dedicated support from our team of energy finance specialists to help our customers review controls, interpret performance and make sense of month-end close data.
The new product is currently available to our Ignition customers, who can get in touch with their customer success representative to obtain an upgrade.
