NUoS Settlement Management for Retailers
Sage have been market leaders in NEMMCO Settlement Reconciliation since the commencement of the NEM, providing FRMPs using their systems with lower risk, better analysis, and better cashflow management by detecting and resolving settlement discrepancies earlier and more efficiently.
Sage now offers the same sophisticated solution for the NUoS Settlement Process. Unlike NEMMCO Settlements, NUoS Settlements allow for invoice items to be disputed, and Sage EMS NUoS Settlement Management automates this process, but still offers control over the final response to a received invoice.
Invoice items are be marked as reconciled and to be paid, discrepancy and to be paid, discrepancy and review, or discrepancy and to be disputed.
Discrepancy items can be paid automatically, disputed automatically, or reviewed. All line items can have their status changed to to be paid, to be disptuted, or to be reviewed, individually, or in bulk based on sophisticated selection criteria.
Like NEMMCO Settlements Reconciliation, NUoS Management not only automatically detects discrepancies, but then goes on to initiate and track actions to determine the cause of the discrepancy and resolve it. For example, where the discrepancy appears to be due to different metering data being available to the issuing NSP and the recipient, attempts to determine the correct version of the metering data are made:
- Where the given NMI is included in MSATS settlement, the readings utilised by NEMMCO can be compared to those utilised by the NSP, and those available to the recipient. If NEMMCO and the recipient agree, then the item can be marked for automatic dispute. On the other hand, if the NSP and NEMMCO agree, the item can be marked either for review (depending on the size of the discrepancy) or automatic payment.
- Tools such as B2B PMD and VMD requests and MSATS C4 requests are used to re-confirm meter data and configuration data for disputed line items.
- Items can be disputed based on consumption (readings), configuration (e.g. tariff, connected or removed meters, billing vs. check metering, etc.
Sage EMS NUoS Settlement Management provides:
- Full NUoS Invoice Reconciliation at NMI / consumption / tariff / charge level.
- Automatic categorisation into proposed actions:
- Automatic investigation of discrepancies, and root-cause analysis:
- Configuration
- Meter Data
- Tariff Calculations
- Sophisticated selection of discrepancy items by discrepancy type, status, root cause, and proposed action.
- Individual or bulk updating of proposed action for discrepancy items.
- Generation of payment summary and response file.
- Full integration with Exception Management.
- Calculations of the consumption and demand discrepancies and dollar figures.
Sage have been market leaders in NEMMCO Settlement Reconciliation since the commencement of the NEM, providing FRMPs using their systems with lower risk, better analysis, and better cash flow management by detecting and resolving settlement discrepancies earlier and more efficiently.
Sage now offers the same sophisticated solution for the NUoS Billing Process. Unlike NEMMCO Settlements, NUoS Billing allow for invoice items to be disputed, and Sage EMS NUoS Billing for NSPs is designed to minimise disputes in the first place, but provides automation that reviews disputed items, and initiates and tracks action to resolve the disputes or to identify where a dispute has been raised based on invalid data by the FRMP.
Sage EMS NUoS Billing for NSPs requires all of the optional components of Configuration Management mentioned above.
Sage EMS NUoS Billing for NSPs provides:
- Automatic generation of NUoS Invoices based on configuration and reading data.
- Automatic processing of invoices responses.
- Automatic investigation of disputes.
- Automatic MDN re-issue (where Sage EMS is providing MDP functionality) where the NSP is also the MDP and the dispute appears to be based on a reading related consumption discrepancy.
- Automatic PMD requests where the NSP is not the MDP and the dispute appears to be based on a reading related consumption discrepancy.
- Automatic C4 request where the NSP is not the RP, and the dispute appears to be based on a configuration related discrepancy.
Automatic assignment of disputes based on the identified cause and proposed action.