Bills
Every bill, in whatever form it arrives, read and checked line by line.
Every difference, a finding
Each company’s findings for its latest billed months are re-evaluated every night, against the inventory and the contract.
Reconciliation
One invoice, taken apart
Bill, inventory and contract are compared line by line, and each difference opens a finding of its own.
Billed, not held
A service charge that matches no service in the inventory.
Held, never billed
A live service that no bill charged for in the month.
Outside a contract
A service billed with no contract, before its contract starts or after it was terminated.
No order reference
A bill with no order reference, cleared once the reference is supplied.
The families
A finding for each kind of gap
Beyond reconciliation, findings come in four more families: pricing, mobile, rebate and utilisation.
| Finding | Family | Opens when |
|---|---|---|
| Price variance | Pricing | A recurring charge is billed above or below its contracted price, beyond a small tolerance. |
| Early billing | Pricing | A service is billed before it went live. |
| Undelivered | Pricing | A contracted service or site line has nothing live behind it, well past its start date. |
| Part month | Pricing | A part-month charge does not match the days the service was live. |
| Unexplained change | Pricing | A recurring charge changes from the month before, with no order or amendment behind it. |
| Bandwidth mismatch | Pricing | A service is billed at a bandwidth other than the one its contract prices. |
| Tax rate | Pricing | Tax is charged at a rate other than the country’s dated rate. |
| Service level missed | Pricing | A service misses its contracted service level, so the credit can be claimed. |
| Bundle | Reconciliation | A bundle is billed while none of its services is delivered, or before any went live. |
| Duplicate | Reconciliation | Two services are billed for the same circuit. |
| Billed after disconnect | Reconciliation | A completed disconnect is still charged on a later bill. The finding cites the provider’s reference. |
| Cost per Mbps delivered | Utilisation | A link costs far more per delivered Mbps than comparable links across the group. |
| Rebate overdue | Rebate | A rebate period passes its due date not fully received. Its severity grows with the money at stake against the company’s month, and its age can only raise it. |
Mobile
Mobile lines checked for activity and roaming
- No activity
- A mobile line billed with no data, voice or SMS for several months opens a finding.
- Roaming spike
- Roaming far above a line’s own recent average, and above a set floor, opens a finding.
- Leaver’s line
- A line still billed after its holder has left opens a finding.
- Usage
- Usage from the provider’s file is matched to lines by number. An uncertain match is never guessed.
- What acting stops
- The mobile view shows, per currency, what acting on every open line would stop each month.
Utilisation
A quiet link, raised on the facts
Every fact weighed
A link that runs well below its committed rate over a full billing period opens a finding only when its role, contract, monitoring coverage and billing history all allow it.
Held back for cause
A backup, DR, burst or seasonal link, an unknown role, thin monitoring, a short window or a contractual minimum holds the finding back.
Kept with its reason
A finding that is held back is kept with its reason, never silently dropped.
A gap becomes a task
A finding held back for an unknown circuit role or thin monitoring opens a data task to close the gap.
How it is worked
A finding, from identified to closed
Weighed
A finding’s severity is measured against its own company’s spend for the month.
Evidenced
Each evaluation stores enough evidence to replay it, and no personal data.
Worked on its page
A finding is a record worked on its own page, not a task in the work queue.
Moved through its states
It moves from identified to in review, then to disputed, recovered, rejected or suppressed.
Read in scope
Findings narrow to one division, and on a review over several months each figure names the period it covers.
Disputes and credits
Each dispute, followed to its credit
- It cites
- A finding, a bill line or a bill.
- It moves
- From raised to acknowledged, and closes as credited, denied or withdrawn.
- It claims
- Less than the charge, never more.
- The credit
- A credit the provider grants is matched to the dispute that earned it when it lands on a later bill.
- Its age
- Each open dispute is aged against its provider’s usual response window. A warning goes out when one has been open longer than a chosen number of days.
- The summary
- Each claim stated in the group’s reporting currency where the bill recorded a conversion. Any currency that could not be converted is named, and currencies are never added into an invented total.
Questions
Questions about findings
Why is there no held-but-not-billed finding yet?
Held-but-not-billed and contract checks wait until the company has a bill loaded for the month.
Is a month with no usage file counted as a quiet line?
No. A month with no usage record counts as unknown, never as no usage.
Will the nightly run undo someone’s decision?
No. Re-evaluating a finding never overwrites a status a person has set.
Why can some findings not be disputed?
A dispute claims a billed charge, so a finding where the bill is below the contract, or where nothing was billed, cannot be disputed.
A mobile line with no activity is not disputed either, because the fix is to cease it.
Why does a link finding show no measurements?
Its page says why: no monitoring connected, no interface bound, or nothing measured that month.
Start with one company’s invoices
Three invoices, as the provider sent them, show what Riopex reads.
Request a pilot