What Does It Actually Cost You If Just 10% of Your Commercial Bills Are Wrong?

Take your total annual utility spend. Multiply by 3%. That is toward the lower end of what may be sitting in billing errors on your accounts. For a commercial real estate portfolio spending $20 million annually on utilities, that is $600,000. **What if this happens every year?**

But the real number is not the overpayment alone. It is the overpayment times the number of years it has been occurring. Most billing errors are not recent events. They are systematic miscalculations that compound over time — often going back three to five years.

At five years and $600,000 annually, you are looking at a potential $3 million exposure. In a real estate portfolio, at a 5% cap rate, $600,000 in annual savings represents $12 million in asset value creation.

We are not suggesting every account has a 20% error rate. Our findings vary significantly by account type, utility jurisdiction, and account history. But the range is real, it is documented by industry research, and the only way to know where your portfolio falls is to audit.