How Reconciliation Billing Works

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Business & Developers

Reconciliation Reports are run monthly and provide an updated view of primary charges for a given month, reflecting any data, billing or charging changes that have been made since the provisional report or the previous reconciliation.

Reconciliation Report Timings

Reconciliation Reports are run at the following intervals:

  • R1 – at the end of the billing month
  • R2 – 2 months after the end of the billing month
  • R3 – 8 months after the end of the billing month

For example, in December 2019, the November 2019 R1, September 2019 R2 and March 2019 R3 was published.

The final reconciliation report (RF) is run annually in February for the full previous financial year. For example, in February 2019 the 2017-18 RF was published. 

Billing Timetable

With each new reconciliation run, the Wholesale Billing Team analyse any differences since the previous reports to identify any anomalies or data errors and, where possible, address them before the next run. Scottish Water will sometimes highlight these to Licensed Providers where this required them to correct their data. 

In the case of the annual RF run, a similar analysis is undertaken against the R3 reports to identify any remaining data issues. Licensed Providers have until May to notify Scottish Water of any data issues they have identified in the RF run. Should neither Scottish Water nor the Licensed Provider identify data issues, the associated bills are issued in May.

If Scottish Water or a Licenced Provider identifies a data issue, Scottish Water will arrange review sessions with the Licenced Provider and agree a plan for resolution of the data issues and recalculation of settlement for the affected SPIDs to enable bills to be issued.

Backdating Changes

If a backdated data change is applied in the Central Systems, the resulting adjustment to wholesale charges will be applied at the next reconciliation for all affected month. If a change affects multiple months, this will result in the adjustment being spread over several months.

If the RF has already been run when the backdated change is identified, any material changes should be raised as a Billing Dispute on the LP Customer Portal. The request should include the SPID, details of the change, including any relevant case numbers and the estimate amount. The Wholesale Billing Team will group such requests and arrange an appropriate schedule to rerun the RF charges for the affected SPIDs. 

If an LP wishes, they may request a rerun of the RF for SPIDs affected by a data error from the CMA at their own cost. We would always ask that Licensed Providers liaise with Scottish Water before raising any such a request to discuss how best to proceed.