Glossary

Account

The consumption element against which a bill is raised. The simplest accounts will have a single tariff for a single commodity at a single site (e.g. a single electricity meter (ICP) on an anytime tariff). More complex accounts may have more than one tariff (e.g. a single electricity ICP with separate day and night tariffs), it is also possible for one account to have more than one commodity (e.g. dual fuel, gas and electricity metering at the same address provided by the same retailer), and more than one ICP for the same commodity.

Account Name

A supplier provided identifier for an account, typically a unique numeric identifier

Budget

A user-agreed and fixed set of related monthly data recording expected monthly cost and consumption values over a determined period of time (typically financial year).

Commodity

A consumable associated with quantity based invoicing, such as natural gas or electricity.

Commodity Group

A set of commodities that can be usefully reported as a group (e.g. the energy commodity group contains all commodities for which consumption can be converted to kWh units)

Control

A self-contained, data display element that can be placed on any location on any configurable web page. The standard template widgets are:

• Data Table
• Graph
• Summary Table
• Invoice Browser
• ICP Information Browser
• Account Information Browser
• Document Browser
• Notes Browser
• Budget Tracker

Data

The data in Ellserve is either:

• A data stream: time-series data captured (after validation) from
  • invoices (e.g. account costs or ICP consumption), or
  • external databases (e.g. climate data)
• User-specific reference(e.g. reporting groups)
• Quantised by month: reporting data aggregated from input and system generated data streams to a monthly value.

Definition

A certain set of defined constraints, i.e. the required constraints for a particular report.

Display Control

A section of the web page used to display, and possibly to edit, Ellserve data. A Display Control shows data in table, report or graphical form

Forecast

A continually updated set of system-generated monthly data of the expected monthly cost and consumption values for a period of 18 months into the future.

Invoice

A document detailing the charges made by a supplier for supply of a commodity.

Invoice Amount Due

The total to be paid to the supplier with regard to an individual invoice - this includes any balance bought forward from previous invoices or any non-typical charges made on the invoice.

Invoice Charge

The total of charges related to the supply of a commodity on a bill (excluding balances bought forward and non-standard charges. Typically charge and amount due are the same, but may differ if balances are bought forward as may happen for instance if a late payment resulted in the loss of a prompt payment discount.

Invoice Due Date

The date in which the payment detailed in an invoice is due to be paid to the supplier.

Invoice Number

An identifier used by a supplier to uniquely identify an invoice. Invoice identification can be complex: the supplier may use a single identifier when referring to a statement of several hundred individual invoices or may not use any identifier at all, but rely on invoice date.

Note: "N/A" will appear in any invoice number field where no such number has been provided.

Invoice Status

The status of an invoice within Ellerve. An invoice may be:

• Live: The single, legitimate description of cost and consumption over the invoice period
• Retired: A superseded copy of an invoice, retained to allow for a complete record of invoices processed by Ellserve.

Note: An invoice may be retired for many reasons, however, unless an account was mistakenly invoiced after being closed
      all retired invoices will be associated by at least one live invoice.

Monthly Data

Ellserve reporting uses data aggregated to calendar month intervals.

Monthly data is either

• Account-independent:
  • Climate data
• Account-specific:
  • Invoice count
• Account-specific & consumption-based:
  • Consumption
  • Cost (excluding GST)
  • Cost (including GST)
  • Emissions

Monthly Value Types

Value Type	Applies to	Definition
Normalised	Account-specific & consumption-based data	Values allocated to the month in which related consumption actually took place. E.g. That portion of June consumption in a July invoice would be aggregated to June's normalised consumption values.
Invoiced	Account-specific & consumption-based data	Values allocated to the month in which related consumption was invoiced (by invoice date). E.g. That portion of June consumption in a July invoice would be aggregated to July's invoiced consumption values.
Forecast	Account-specific & consumption-based data	Values allocated to the month in which actual consumption is expected to take place. Note: Forecast values are updated as new invoice data is received.
Projected	Account-specific & consumption-based data	A specialised data form that integrates normalised and forecast data to allow for single 'expected' values for any month where, for whatever reason, the invoice record is incomplete.
Budgeted	Account-specific & consumption-based data	A set of user-agreed 'expected' values for future months. Note: Unlike forecast and projected data, budgeted values, are permanently fixed i.e. they are not updated as new invoice data is received.

Normalisation

The process of data standardisation to allow meaningful interpretation and comparison with other data. Data maybe normalised in several different ways; however in Ellserve the term “normalised” when applied to cost or consumption implies that invoiced data has been “spread” over the period during which actual consumption took place (thereby avoiding a consumption spike for a month in which more than one invoice is issued).

Projection

A continually updated set of system-generated monthly data of the expected monthly cost and consumption values where actual data stream values for a month are incomplete. Incomplete actual data may occur:

• For individual accounts where invoicing periods do not match calendar months
• For account groups where, in a given month, invoicing an account may complete, partial or absent.

Projected data values for an account are calculated by subtracting actual values from forecast values. Where an account’s actual values are based on incomplete invoicing, a falsely positive variance between Actual and Forecast data will occur. Projected data uses Forecast data to fill in the gap created by missing Actual data, eliminating falsely positive variances and allowing earlier detection of valid variances than would be otherwise possible. Where an account is full y invoiced for a month the Projected value is equal to Actual value.

Report

A set of Data returned by Ellserve

Usage

A term indicating a quantity of a commodity used (sometime associated with a specific activity or application - e.g. 100kWh space heating usage)

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