An analysis by business energy experts, Inenco Group found that one in five energy bills have errors on them that often go unnoticed.
The firm analysed thousands of business energy invoices and forecast the scale of the issue for all UK businesses – totalling up to half a billion pound in incorrect charge:
- Retail and leisure industry - £200 million
- Manufacturing industry - £65 million
- Property sector - £78.5 million
- Public sector - £112 million
Inenco Group said that the most common issue in manufacturing was incorrect rates applied to bills, followed by meter read errors. The biggest value errors were caused by technical billing issues and incorrect taxes were also an issue.
It advised conducting invoice validation and bill audits to check for inaccuracies across the supply chain.
David Cockshott, Inenco chief commercial officer, said: “At a time when manufacturing energy costs are forecast to increase by 25% by 2020 and the sector is under pressure to reduce costs from every direction, recovering these missing millions could make a big impact to the bottom line.
“Paying too much for energy bills because of simple data issues or human error is easily resolved and can result in significant savings, from direct refunds to preventing future unnecessary pay-outs.
“Whilst smart meters and smarter systems will go some way towards preventing future inaccuracies, the energy supply chain must work harder to prevent these issues from happening. It would pay for all manufacturers to undertake some form of invoice validation to check for incorrect charges and ensure they only pay for the energy they use.”
