With stores closed and no sales being transacted, retailers are feeling a severe cash crunch. However, there is something the CFO’s can do right now to bring in cash. Remco has found in certain States utility bills contain significant errors. This can be as much as 2%-25% of the utility bill which is very significant.
While most retailers have taken significant steps to take care of the financial crisis by closing stores, furloughing employees, canceling orders, it is still not enough.
CFO’s need to think about untapped revenue sources, such as, auditing past and current utility charges from a regulatory standpoint. Auditing utility bills from a regulatory standpoint is a proven way to discover a very large untapped revenue source. This can be a critical component of a retailer’s current and future financial well-being.
You are asking yourself, what is a regulatory audit and why is it necessary? A regulatory audit compares the bills to what was approved in the rate case to what was translated into the tariff. This is not a standard utility audit which checks for duplicate payments, overlaps in billing dates, wrong rate being applied to the bill etc.
Remco Energy has been in the business of auditing utility bills for over 35 years. Remco Energy is the only firm in the country which has the knowledge, expertise and experience to audit utility bills from a regulatory standpoint. Remco works with one of the largest most experienced law firms in the country (700 plus attorneys) in collecting on these overcharges.
Most CFO’s assume auditing the bills from a regulatory standpoint will reap no financial benefit as this is a regulated industry. There can be nothing further from the truth. Although, utilities are regulated and the regulators approve the rates, the problem is once the rates are approved the regulators ask the utility to translate the approved rates into the tariff. The tariff is extremely complex and very difficult to understand unless you are a utility. Unfortunately, this function has little or no regulatory over site which results in billions of dollars in overcharges per year.
