Invoicing Components and Relationship

Learn about the various components of an invoice and their management.

Invoice processing lifecycle starts with consumption from utility and ends with payment from Customers. The essential components included in creating an invoice are:

• Customer - The end user of the commodity (Gas/Electricity) is called Customer. Each Customer could have one or many premises.
• Premise - The location where the commodity is consumed. Each Premise can have one or more Meters. Premise is identified by Premise No. in CIS. It is same as the ESI ID (Electric Service Identifier) which is unique for a property address.
• Meter - Meters are installed on the Customer's premise to measure consumption. Each meter can have multiple reads/consumptions in a month.
• Consumption - Each consumption includes Consumption Details about the commodity used for a particular period of time. The consumption is linked to Premise through the Premise no. or ESI ID. In the CIS system premise must exist for each Customer in the billing database for invoicing to occur.
• Rate - The RateDetail is Rate provided for account at which the consumption is billed. To view rate details, see View Rate.
• TDSP Charges - This is the transmission and distribution charges for utility. This component is essential only for Supplier Consolidated and Rate Ready billing Models. For details, see Supplier Consolidated Model.

Invoice generation will fail if any of these components are missing. CIS provides pre-invoice error validations and post-invoice error-handling solutions to the Suppliers. The invoicing errors are analyzed and communicated to the Suppliers and a fix is implemented according to their advice.