Combinations Of Service Provider Billing Methods

Consider the following situation:

In the above example, we are billing for the energy service provider and the meter service provider is billing for us. This means that we will calculate the charges for ourselves, interface charges from CheapPower, and then interface our charges and CheapPower's charges to MeterCo. MeterCo will then produce a bill for the customer that contains our distribution charges, CheapPower's energy charges, and MeterCo's service charges. To help solidify this point, let's look at how this customer would look in MeterCo's CIS system.

There are some restrictions in respect of permissible combinations of service providers that may supply service to a customer as described in the following points:

• If the system encounters a customer with a We Bill For Them (WBFT) - Bill Ready service provider and another service provider that is They Bill For Us (TBFU) - Rate Ready, a billing error will be produced. Why? Because TBFU - Rate Ready means they have everything they need to calculate our bills and therefore we do not interface bill lines to them. If we don't interface our bill lines to them, then we can't interface the charges that were interfaced from the WBFT - Bill Ready service provider. You may wonder why we don't prohibit WBFT - Rate Ready and TBFU - Rate Ready, because it's conceivable for the TBFU service provider to have our rate and the WBFT service provider's rate.
• If the system encounters a WBFT - Pay At Pay Time service provider and another service provider that is TBFU, a billing error will be produced. Why? Because when the system detects a TBFU service provider, it transfers the receivable from the customer to the service provider (and therefore the customer's account will never be paid).