As has been well documented, many businesses are battling to keep afloat and are taking measures to cut costs wherever they can, energy being one of them.

There are plenty of energy efficiency initiatives that can be taken whilst a well-planned energy procurement strategy will also mitigate against one of the biggest overheads in business – heating, lighting, refrigeration, and ventilation.

But given the costs of gas and electricity, it also pays not to be negligent when it comes to checking your business energy bills, either.

Our research has found that companies can be overcharged by as much as three to five percent by energy suppliers.

Energy bills can be quite complex, especially if you are a multi-site organisation with multiple contracts starting at different dates and on different tariffs.

Not only will the tariffs be different, but the way also that information is displayed on the invoice can vary, which can easily lead to mistakes from the suppliers’ end going undetected.

Add in the government discounts that are available to some, but not others, and it is not unusual for the energy supplier to get their numbers wrong.

Extra time and attention should be out into checking the price you are being charged is correct, otherwise you could be paying out for energy that you haven’t used and undoing any hard work that has gone into becoming more energy efficient.

Invoice validation, therefore, is a vital part of any energy management solution and can save thousands of pounds.

The software used in invoice validation can detect such errors but it is also only as good as the person analysing the data because it takes a trained and experienced energy management consultant to spot the more technical anomalies.

As experienced practitioners in this field, we will ensure all discrepancies are flagged up and dealt with.