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Environmental & Risk Management / Energy Management / Accounting Supervisor

Review and Approve Bills

Use the Review and Approve bills task to approve bills with a status of Pending Approval. The Review and Approve Bills form is restricted to show only bills with this status. A bill gets the status of Pending Approval when it is sent for approval. See Sending a Bill for Approval.

When a bill is approved, it is also archived which moves it to the Archived Bills table.

Note: Once a Bill has been archived, you can no longer edit it. You should not approve bills until you are certain the values in the bill will not need to be modified.

Guidelines for the data needed to archive bills

Upon approval, a record will automatically be inserted into the Scheduled Costs table for the total Expense Amount of the selected bill. The Scheduled Cost Transaction Code is then automatically entered into the Archived Bill record for the selected bill.

The archiving of a bill is what makes it available for viewing in the Analytics portion of the application, for example, in the Measurement and Verification report or the Utility Metrics report.

The application looks for anomalies in dates when processing the bills for approval, so it is important that you process a sequence of bills that follow the rules.

To ensure that a Bill is archived so that it can be used in the Analytics portion of the application, ensure that bills:

• Have no gaps in the Date Service Starts and Date Service Ends dates for the sequence of bills being approved. This means that the Date Service Starts for a bill must be equal to the Date Service Ends for the bill for the previous billing period.

  Additionally, the Date Service Starts for the first bill in the bills to be approved must equal the Date Service Ends for the most recent bill in the Archived Bills table.

• Have no gaps in billing periods in the sequence of bills you are approving.

  Additionally, have a Billing Period one greater than the Billing Period of the most recent Bill in the Archived Bills table.

  The following shows a sequence of bills with properly entered dates.The highlighting shows the Date Service Starts for a bill as equal to the Date Service ends for the bill from the preceding billing period.

  	Billing Period	Date Service Starts	Date Service Ends
  Archived Bills table
  	2005-10	2005-10-13	2005-11-12
  	2005-11	2005-11-12	2006-12-13
  Bills table
  	2006-12	2006-12-13	2007-01-12
  	2007-01	2007-01-12	2007-02-11

Viewing Percentage Variances (Audit Action)

To view percentage variance:

1. Select the Environmental & Risk Management/Energy Management/Account Supervisor/Review and Approve Bills task.
2. Use the Filter console to find the bill you wish to audit.
3. Click Audit in the row for the bill.

   You are presented with a window that shows the following variance percentage between the selected Bill and:

• The expense amount of the bill for the same Vendor and Vendor Account for the previous Billing Period.

• The expense amount of the bill for the same Vendor and Vendor Account for the same Billing Period for the previous year.

• The average expense amount of the bill for the same Vendor and Vendor Account for the previous 12 months.

• The income amount of the bill for the same Vendor and Vendor Account for the previous Billing Period.

• The income amount of the bill for the same Vendor and Vendor Account for the same Billing Period for the previous year.

• The average income amount of the bill for the same Vendor and Vendor Account for the previous 12 months.

Approving Bills

You cannot edit a bill after it has been approved. If you need to edit a bill or it line items before approving it, see Editing a Bill or Its Lines. A bill must have at lease one line item before it can be approved.

To approve a bill:

1. Select the Environmental & Risk Management/Energy Management/Account Supervisor/Review and Approve Bills task.
2. Use the Filter console to find the bill you wish to approve
3. To verify the lines associated with the selected bill:
   1. In the Bills section, click Lines.
   2. Click Close.

4. To approve the bill, in the Bills list, click the check box next to the bills, and click Approve and Archive Selected.

The bill is removed from the list as it is now in the bill_archive table

Note: If you receive an error when attempting to approve a Bill, it most likely does not meet the requirements for archiving. You will need to make sure the selected bill has the following:
A Service Start Date equal to the Service End Date of the most recent Bill in the Archived Bills table.
A Billing Period one greater than the Billing Period of the most recent Bill in the Archived Bills table.

Editing a Bill or Its Lines

To edit a bill or its lines:

1. Select the Environmental & Risk Management/Energy Management/Account Supervisor/Review and Approve Bills task.
2. Use the Filter console to find the bill you wish to edit.
3. To view the bill details or to edit it:
   1. In the Bills section, click Edit for the bill.

      The Edit tab shows details for the bill.

   2. Make any edits to the bill and click Save.
4. To edit a bill line:
   1. From the Bill Line List tab at the bottom of the screen, click Edit for the line. The Bill Line tab becomes active.
   2. Make your edits in the Bill Line tab, and click Save.
   3. To edit another bill line for the selected bill, click << Line List at the top of the Bill Line tab and repeat steps 4a - 4b.
5. To add line items to the bill:
   1. In the Bill section at the top of the screen, click Add a Line.

      The Bill Line tab at the bottom of the screen becomes active.

   2. Add details for the line and click Save.
6. To return to the Select tab so that you can approve the bill or work with a different bill, click << Select.

Rejecting Bills

Note: Rejecting a bill changes the Bill Status to “Rejected” which will make it viewable in the Enter Bills task; it will no longer be available from the Review and Approve Bills task.

To reject a bill:

1. Select the Environmental & Risk Management/Energy Management/Account Supervisor/Review and Approve Bills task.
2. Use the Filter console to find the bill you wish to work with.
3. Click Edit to view the details of the Bill on the Edit tab.
4. Click Reject at the top of the Bill panel.

Deleting Bills

Note: This action cannot be undone. In the event a Bill has been deleted unintentionally, it will have to be re-entered.

To delete a bill:

1. Select the Environmental & Risk Management/Energy Management/Account Supervisor/Review and Approve Bills task.
2. Use the Filter console to find the bill you wish to delete.
3. Click Edit to view the details of the Bill on the Edit tab.
4. Click Delete at the top of the Bill panel.