Call Center Billing Auditing

Billing auditing is the process of verifying carefully in the bill if what was charged by the service provider was what was agreed to in the contract. This verification includes the recalculation of each call and the verification of every item charged in the bill.  

Typically, most organizations don’t do the complete recalculation of all calls every month; usually they do that only for the ones in which big discrepancies between what was identified by the billing system and what was actually charged were spotted.  

Nevertheless, verifying the bills is a necessity in a large call center. Verification identifies charge discrepancies and enables the organization to get the due reimbursement for overcharging from the PTT providers. Experience shows that savings between 5 percent and 12 percent are usually attainable through regular auditing of the bills. Considering the expenditures with telecom of large call centers, 5 percent can mean an enormous amount of money, and therefore auditing the bills usually is worth the effort.  

Here it is interesting to mention that when we say verify the bills most people think about re-calculating the value charged for the calls. Although this is no doubt an important part of the verification, there are several other things that should be checked:  

• Verification whether the charges are associated to trunks that actually belong to the organization 

• Verification if there are undue charges for installation or trunk subscription 

• Verification if there are penalties for late payment unduly charged 

• Verification if there are charges for not achieving the minimum-committed volume  

Whether the charges are associated to trunks that actually belong to the organization should be verified. Although it may seem a bit obvious, the first and basic verification (very often not executed) is to check if the bill belongs to the organization, and the resource is actually being used. It is not uncommon to receive bills that don’t belong to the organization or previously belonged but the resource was cancelled or deactivated. In large operations with several sites (sometimes in different countries), just to be able to check if the bills belong to the organization and verify if the amount charged is compatible with the historical value is in itself a difficult task.  

Verification if there are undue charges for installation or trunk subscription is a very common problem. That includes all sorts of charges ranging from installations fees to trunks subscriptions and special services. Those charges sometimes are a large percentage of the bill and their verification is far from easy.  

Verification is necessary if there are penalties or interest for late payment unduly charged. Such charges very often are wrongly calculated and don’t correspond to what was defined in the contract. The bill verifier has to check if the penalties and interest are due and if they were rightly calculated as defined in the contract.  

Verification if there are charges for not achieving the minimum-committed volume is important to verify if there are charges for not achieving the minimum-committed volume and if these charges were properly calculated as defined in the contract. Usually, the difference between what was committed and what was actually used has to be paid in full.  

These kinds of problems very often provoke more overcharges than the mistakes in the calculation of the calls. Besides the direct financial gains, auditing the bills enables the evaluation of many other important aspects linked with the management of a large call-center operation: 

• Identifying the delicate balancing act between the minimum volume commitment and tariffs 

• Identifying volume and duration of the calls, which is crucial to negotiate charging granularity 

• Identifying the point at which least-cost route configuration in the PBXs needs adjustment due to changes in tariffs 

• Knowing when it becomes feasible to have a private-voice network (interest of traffic concentrated in some specific area code) 

• Accurately calculating the number of trunks and circuits (capacity planning)  

Analyzing the voice bills enables accurate answers to all these questions, and the telecom manager should be aware that the analysis of a telecom bill is much more than just checking the tariffs. It is also about verifying the traffic and comparing the current prices against available alternatives.  

The process of verifying the bill usually follows these steps:  

• Verify if the bill and the resources belong to the organization. 

• Verify if the value charged is compatible with the historical value. 

• Verify if the minimum-committed volume was achieved (if not, recalculate the penalty and check if it was rightly charged). 

• Verify if there is any penalty and interest for late payment being charged. 

• Verify if the charging period is correct and if there is any additional fee being charged for unsolicited services, such as installation or subscription. 

• Identify resources not in use, such as trunks without any calls.  

After verifying these basic items, you should check the calls, recalculating the value and checking the traffic interest:  

• Verify from and to where each call was made. 

• Identify the area codes from and to each call. 

• Verify how much each call is supposed to cost, based on the organization’s specific contract, and identify the discrepancies. 

• Identify if the taxes were properly applied. 

• Verify if there are calls charged outside of the admissible charging period.  

When auditing telephone bills, it is important to consider that this procedure is effective only when there is a process in place to define how and when the organization will be reimbursed. Contracts must have dispute clauses, and, ideally, the contracts in place should foresee that. If errors were spotted in the bills before the payment due date, the organization can notify the service provider and pay only what was considered due. The values over which there is disagreement must be discussed jointly. If the charges prove to be right, the organization pays the service provider without penalties for delaying the payment (interest is due).  

The organization musts define a formal process through which all invoice disputes are treated. The process needs a definition of time frames for each party involved and should mirror the dispute resolution clauses of individual contracts or master agreements. Typically, the whole process of disputing a bill from identification to solution should not exceed three months.  

The SLA must consider that the invoice payment doesn’t imply acceptance of the charged values. Ideally, the organization should have at least one year to audit the values charged, and the SLA should foresee that. If the errors identified exceed 5 percent of the total value of the bills, the service providers must reimburse the organization for the costs involved in auditing the bills. This is a considerable cost and a good mechanism for keeping service providers accurate.  

The organization must define clearly the time after which charges are not acceptable (in some countries it is defined by law). For example, services provided more than six months ago should not be charged.  

The organization must schedule regular meetings with the service provider invoice team. Such meetings should be forums to discuss problems with the invoices and items added, changed, and cancelled.  

The organization should try to define standardized invoice cycles and guarantee that all invoices are due on the same day; this simplifies the billing and payment process.  

Of course, all these recommendations depend on negotiation at the contract stage and arguably these points belong in the negotiations chapter. However, these clauses only become meaningful if actual billing verification is done; without it you will have no recourse or knowledge of billing errors.