It’s no secret: managing, auditing, approving and paying business phone bills every month can be a major headache, if not a complete nightmare. Things have changed a lot in the past several years, and due to downsizing and reorganizations, many AP staff now find themselves stuck with the review and approval of phone bills.
This is a huge responsibility. Some AP and I.T. folks have even reported difficulty sleeping at night. They’re overwhelmed with stress, knowing they must approve millions of dollars in company phone charges each month. The burden can be enormous.
The good news is that some help has arrived with the increased offering of online billing packages from the phone companies. These online services are now much easier for most novices to use. Even better, these wonderful packages are mostly free. In fact, most telecommunications carriers in the U.S. now offer complimentary, comprehensive online billing and reporting services to their business customers.
For example, Verizon, AT&T and Sprint all offer their business customers excellent online billing packages for both local and long-distance services. These online billing tools generally offer detailed reporting and historical billing information, allowing customers to retrieve vital usage information and spot unusual billing activity; thus, finding potential errors. This information can be used to help track and reduce costs better, while raising red flags for possible telephone fraud.
What are some red flags to look for when using the new online billing tools? With a bit of investigation and basic computer skills, you can learn to spot fraud and call abuse quickly with online billing. A few carriers even label some of their standard online reports as “fraud” reports or “after hours usage reports.” These reports are created to show unusual after-hours calling activity and atypical calling locations to help business consumers quickly spot phone fraud and abuse.
In the past, wading through voluminous phone bills and intricate detail was almost ridiculously laborious. With online reports, it’s relatively simple. Another benefit of these reports is that you can easily spot unauthorized charges from long-distance “slammers” and unauthorized third-party billers each month without having to dig through piles or boxes of paper bills.
Tracking your telecommunications costs each month is a valuable way to note cost discrepancies and practice good telecom cost management techniques. You can also track telecom taxes and surcharges. If you make changes to your long-distance and local calling plans to save money, online billing allows you to compare and track your costs afterward without having to dig through old phone bills or call the phone company.
Historical online billing reports are also a great way to keep your CFO and CEO informed about telecom expenses. Many of these reports can be exported to create spreadsheets and charts for easy analysis and presentation.
And, here is a cost saving tip you should be aware of once you start using online billing features. If you are still paying for costly billing CDROM billing reports to be manufactured and mailed to you in addition to your paper phone bill by the phone company each month, try online billing instead and you may very well cancel those costly and unnecessary CDROM reports and paper bills each month. You may even want to go paperless and receive your bills 100% online after utilizing online billing. And all of the carriers will allow you to continue to receive a paper bill in addition to getting online billing each month.
If you don’t have enough staff or time to do this yourself, another option is to hire a professional telephone bill audit consulting company to check your invoices regularly. You can arrange for spot checks every month or on occasion.
Once an independent cost-savings audit is complete, your consultant can also provide affordable, ongoing telecommunications expense management for your business. Consultants will also use the online tools, although typically they can give you much more in-depth analysis and recommendations for cost savings.
Whatever your plan of attack, you can breathe easier, knowing you are not alone in your struggle. Take advantage of the online tools available to see if your company is being charged for services you should not be paying. Using these tools to unearth a wealth of information at your fingertips is the best place to start.
Mark Evans is Principal and founder of BottaBoom Consulting LLC, a contingency-fee based telephone bill audit and telecom cost management firm that has been saving organizations money for years. In his words, “Reviewing a phone bill is like being on a treasure hunt, and there is a lot of gold to be found in almost every company’s phone bills.” BottaBoom offers clients a free introductory cursory telephone bill audit to see if a more-in-depth audit is of value to the client. Clients realize a majority of their savings if a full blown audit is conducted thereafter.
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Try a risk-free telephone bill audit consultation today. We are leaders in telecom cost control, telephone auditing and telecom audit, data audit and cell phone audit for large, medium-sized and small businesses. Contact BottaBoom at 1-888-487-5326 or visit our contact page at http://www.bottaboom.com/contact-us/
Tags: Telecom Audit, telephone bill audit
