What Do I Do When Two Vendors Use the Same Account Number?

What do you do when two different vendors use the same account number (also called an Account Code) for different account/meters in EnergyCAP? How do you tell them apart? Will EnergyCAP confuse the bills for each? Today's Quick Tip provides insight into how EnergyCAP works behind the scenes to maintain order in your utility database.

A Vendor Problem

It's possible that two different vendors could define the same account number for two different accounts. The most common situation is deregulated electricity or gas, and the supplier uses the same account number as the local distribution company. That creates a potential problem, whether you are doing manual data entry of your billing information or importing your bills electronically.

You might discover the issue when setting up a new account, or when a vendor has recently made a change to an account number. When you input a partial or complete account number into an EnergyCAP search field, you discover two different search results for the same search string:

Since you have no control over what numbers different utilities may choose for their accounts with you, EnergyCAP considers the vendor as well as the account number when determining uniqueness. Since a single vendor would never use the same account number for two different accounts, this means EnergyCAP will be able to 'route' your utility data to the correct account as long as the Account Number AND vendor are correctly identified when keying or importing your utility billing data.

To help minimize any confusion on your end, here are several strategies:

• Append commodity and/or vendor information to the account number when you set up the account. 
  CAUTION: If you are using our popular Bill CAPture service for easy bill import, the vendor account number must match exactly the account number on the bill.
• Consider a unique nomenclature for the "Account Name" to help you differentiate the accounts, such as the address of the facility where the meter is located and/or “Supply” vs. “Distribution.”
• Verify accuracy of both the vendor AND account number when entering bills manually.                                            (cont.)

Rules for Bill Import

To avoid issues with duplicate account numbers when importing bill files, always include the Vendor Code, and follow these guidelines.

1. The import file must include a header line (see image below).

2. The import file must include the following in the first six columns for each bill record, in the order indicated: 

1. ACCOUNTCODE—the alpha-numeric Account Number for the bill record.
2. STARTDATE (YYYYMMDD) —The billing period Start Date.
3. ENDDATE (YYYYMMDD) —The billing period End Date.
4. A/C/E—The bill type (A=Actual, C=Corrected, E=Estimated).
5. METERCODE—the Meter Code of the meter associated with the bill.
6. (OPTIONAL) VENDORCODE—bills can be imported without the Vendor Code, but the Vendor Code must be used if you have any cases of duplicate account numbers, and must immediately follow the METERCODE. This may require revisions to the format of your bill import spreadsheet.

1. The bill import file records MUST be sorted in the following sequence: 

1. Ascending Account Code.
2. Ascending Vendor Code (if included as recommended).
3. Ascending Start Date.
4. Ascending End Date.

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Questions? 

Email 20x2020@omes.ok.gov.

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