Mark Hatton Digital Sustainability Product Owner

Request to add "Accrual" as a Data Quality Type for the ingestion of Accrual activity data from Utility Bill Management (UBM) source systems.

An "Accrual" is a system-generated estimate used in UBM software to improve reporting resolution in the absence of frequent bills. For example, if a utility bill is only received every 3-6 months, the UBM tool predicts monthly behaviour based on historic performance to smooth monthly spend/emission reporting. This minimises spikes in monthly data and subsequent trends.

Once a utility provider supplies an "Actual" record, the "Accrual" collapses and is replaced.  Currently we transform Accruals to Actuals, prior to Sustainability Manager data import.

Note "Estimate" is treated differently to "Accrual". "Estimate" records come from the utility provider where they were unable to access a meter-reading for the bill period. Typically, the following bill period will then get an "Actual" reading and bring the record back up to date. As opposed to "Accruals" which do not come from the utility provider; they are system generated on a customer-side until a bill is received.

It's somewhat common for our Enterprise business to receive negative consumption values from our Utility provider/s. The typical reason being a bill adjustment. On other occasions, a site with solar may generate more than it consumes.

Unfortunately, Sustainability Manager does not accept negative values and we have to transform prior to data import by subtracting from previous records or other facilities.