Who can use it:
Utilities, billing providers, analysts, regulators and consulting firms servicing the utility industry.

Description:
The types of analyses that can be performed cover all consumer billing operations (billing, tax, rates, rebates, etc.). The Pricing Analytic Toolbox typically takes information from databases that contain consumption data (historic usage, severe and mild weather usage, and normal usage) to calculate financial components. This product can be useful for budgeting, forecasting, billing adjustments, compliance reporting, rate cases or other business purposes such as interim rate refunds. In rate evaluations, a graphical display can provide visualization comparing several rate impacts for the entire rate class or any desired subset (such as low-income consumers).

This product is independent from the utility’s customer information system and billing system and currently uses Oracle or Access databases with additional databases to become available soon. It is particularly useful in projecting the effects of a rate change prior to approval or other testing that may be too large to be performed in-house. Input is displayed as menus or a drag and drop flow chart builder. This tool can easily be used by analysts and does not require the assistance of programmers or SAS (a statistical modeling software package) professionals. Outputs of this program can be used to communicate between rate analysts and billing system programmers.

This can be used to change tariff structures in advance of full implementation of billing system modifications. Bill-ready output can be generated and transmitted to the legacy billing program.