Amerex Energy Bill-Auditing and Web-Based EMS Solution

Services Summary

Invoice Auditing and Correction

Amerex provides a utility management software solution that forges utility invoice and data

reception, auditing, accounts payable exporting, and aggregated energy usage analysis. Our solution

is an Internet and cloud-based system, which utilizes a facility tree that is fully customizable and can

provide a hierarchy of data from the meter to any organization-wide level for reporting.

Amerex will integrate any designated facility. Your facilities will be viewable across your entire

organization to improve management interaction and engagement.

The system can track costs, usage and demand for the utility types such as electricity and natural gas,

as well as water, waste, etc. Essentially, anything with an invoice can be tracked in the system. The

solution is capable of tracking limitless facilities and accounts.

General Approach

Amerex approach starts with data collection. We will work with you to organize the reception of

utility data from paper bills, through transmittals or redirection to a P.O. Box, as well as OCR

services to Electronic Data Interchange straight from the utility. We organize your facilities to get a

complete utility profile for each. Once we gather all utility information, it is uploaded to our web-

based software where any person within your organization with an Internet connection can access.

The software’s security is based on a user’s login and can be assigned to any level within the facility

tree hierarchy.

Training and Set-up

Once your accounting and operations users have been setup, we begin training on our system. This

training is typically given via live webinars. The webinar sessions are also recorded for future use by

your staff. We normally give a general overview of the system first. Once the customer has had time

to experience the portal and develop specific questions, we follow up with a more detailed session

tailored to the customers’ specific needs. This allows us to better equip our customers with pertinent

training knowledge rather than a standardized curricula.

Once training is complete and you’re comfortable using the system, we establish the energy profile

for each facility. This process enables you to organize facilities by energy performance, which helps

prioritize efficiency improvements. The software solution will track the progress of energy and cost

savings from efficiency improvements and compare against the baseline set prior to efficiency

implementations.

Verification and Validation of Invoices

Our system supports two independent methodologies for detecting utility billing errors: tariff-based

verification and metric-based validation.

The first method – tariff-based verification – is a premium audit that detects problems in the actual

calculation of the invoice based on the applicable rate, as well as provides flags for new meters being

installed, gaps or overlaps in meter readings, and changes in tariffed rates. To accomplish this, we

use the meter readings from current month’s bills and the previous month's to first look for meter

reading errors, gaps/overlaps in meter readings or meter read dates. Then, we use the meter readings

and utility's tariff that is programmed into our system to fully recalculate the invoices from the meter

readings up. This recalculation allows us to identify errors in delivery charges, meter readings, energy

prices, tax issues, etc. It also signals us when a new meter is installed.

Because we take the actual invoice, scan it, upload it into the portal and recalculate the invoice based

on our internal tariff rate engines, the tariff-based invoice verification process is more expensive on a

per invoice basis as compared to the metric-based validation process. However, it is the most

accurate method.

Our second method – metric-based validation – is a highly flexible, pattern-based algorithm for

identifying potential exceptions in invoices. Once an invoice is received and scanned, it is processed

through the entire array of available exception patterns. When new patterns are identified, they can be

added to the array with a minimum of configuration allowing the system to expand to changing needs

in this regard. We’d like an opportunity to give you a live demonstration to illustrate both methods.

Utility Bill Receipt

We can structure a utility bill receipt redirection if you prefer. First, we would work with utilities and

suppliers to get any data that may be available electronically via image or data stream. Second, we

would contact the billing party directly, with a list of accounts to be redirected. We transmit the

account numbers to be redirected to the billing party contact via email or fax. Last, we follow up one

business day before the redirection date, and transmit the account numbers and redirection date to

ensure the bill receipt process is successfully completed.

Imaging of Invoices

Our process includes ways to receive invoices: as original paper deliveries or as electronic images

received via email, via electronic drops to our inbound FTP site (simpler) or via Service-Oriented

Architecture upload service (more secure). Once received, paper invoices are scanned and processed

with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software and converted to searchable PDF format.

Electronically received invoice files, if not already in PDF format, are converted to searchable PDF

format using similar scanning and OCR processes. Files with significant processing errors are

rejected and reported back to the originator with a request for an updated document or image. This

reduces overall costs and improves the quality of the data compared to employing significant manual

processes to handle low-quality images. Faxes are prime examples of low quality images.

Online Reporting Capability

Our online portal provides multi-variable normalization and optimization such as weather and

business metric benchmarking (energy cost/usage per unit of product, per square foot, etc.).

Portal access via our website www.amerexenergyservices.com

Navigation and Site Overview

The portal is organized into two functional areas: 1) Accounting and 2) Operations. The Accounting

side is most useful for your accounting professionals. The data is displayed in the bill cycle format.

Graphs are viewable in fiscal year as well as calendar formats and invoices may be retrieved easily

and efficiently. The Operations side is useful for energy managers and facility managers. The data

under this tab is gathered from your cycle reads then straight line averaged to the day and placed in

monthly buckets. The information is more meaningful to view monthly for operations type reports.

You get to choose how to organize the data in the corporate tree hierarchy. This allows you to

aggregate data by utility provider, geographically or by operational variance (group similar facility

operations to one another). We can customize the organizational hierarchy of your facilities.

Organization is defined by you, but Amerex will suggest ways we’ve seen companies successfully

organize their data.

Once the administrator is established, you can assign access to any level in the hierarchy. Access will

grant that user the ability to view information from that point in the hierarchy, to any downstream

level. Each user can also select the informational view for reports at any point in the hierarchy in

which they have access.

Data Integration and Data Analysis

The software solution also provides the following features:

Full Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) interface capability

Green Button-compliant data exchange capability

Data and reporting can be exported in XML, CSV, PDF, MHTML, Excel, TIFF and Word

formats

Track your energy efficiency initiatives

Batch reports and customizable reports. Reports are available at all levels of the facility tree

hierarchy, by utility type (enterprise, regional, site-specific).

Examples of pre-defined reports include:

o Energy and dollar savings

o Six (6) benchmarking reports, including costs/usage per square foot

o Actual and weather-normalized annual energy summary

o Interval data recorder (IDR) reporting

o Calendarization of operational data

o Greenhouse gas reporting tool

Customizable business metric reports based on Key Performance Indicators. Examples:

o Energy cost or usage per sales revenue

o Energy cost or usage per item shipped

Customizable alerts and audit rules

Unlimited number of concurrent users

Current and historical utility invoice images

Year over year usage and cost

Portal is accessible on smart phones; iPhone, Android, etc.