Kolena AI Agent
Utility Bill Extraction (AP)
Turn any utility bill - electric, gas, water, sewer, stormwater, or trash - into a clean, cited, footed AP record: usage recomputed from the meter reads, charges reconciled to the total, duplicates screened, master-metered costs allocated across units, and the bill GL-coded and exception-flagged.
Impact
Manual utility-bill entry, footing, duplicate screening, and property coding - done by hand per bill - collapses to minutes, so every bill gets a full audit and coding pass instead of the spot-checks a team has time for across a portfolio
per utility bill
Volume fit
Works best for
owners and property managers processing dozens to thousands of utility bills a month across a portfolio of properties
Too small for
an owner with a handful of bills a month, where manual entry is faster than review setup
Typical inputs
Documents
- Utility bill / invoice (electric, gas, water, sewer, stormwater, trash)
- Combined multi-utility statement
- Master-metered or submetered building bill
- Prior bill for the same account (for period and usage comparison)
Systems
- Utility provider portal
- Google Drive
- SharePoint
- Property-accounting / ERP system
Output
A completed utility-bill record - vendor and account, service point and meter, service period, recomputed meter usage, itemized and footed charges, demand/time-of-use, cost allocation across units, historical usage, a duplicate-payment screen, a ranked exceptions list, and suggested GL coding and routing - every value cited to the bill
Delivered to
- AP / ERP system
- Property or deal folder
- Utility-cost analytics
- Exception / dispute queue
What it extracts
· 14 fields
- Form
Utility Bill Summary
A one-look roll-up of the bill - utility type, provider, account, service address and period, total usage, total due, due date, and a payable/hold read - so a reviewer can orient before the detail.
- Classification
Utility Type
The commodity the bill charges for (electric, gas, water, sewer, stormwater, trash, or combined), which drives which meter, usage, and charge fields the downstream columns extract.
- Form
Vendor and Account
The service provider, account number, invoice number, account holder, remit-to, and billing address, so AP can match the bill to the right account and remit correctly.
- Form
Service Point and Meter
The service address, site ID, meter number(s), rate schedule/tariff, service class, and read type - the utility-specific spine that anchors usage and allocation, with estimated reads flagged.
- Form
Service Period
The issue date, service-period start and end, billing days, due date, and received date, with a note on whether elapsed days match the stated billing days.
- Table
Meter Reads and Usage
One row per meter with previous/current reads and dates, read type, multiplier, and reported usage, plus a recomputation of (current - previous) x multiplier and a match check.
- Form
Demand and Time-of-Use
Billed demand (kW/kVA), demand charge, power factor, and on/off-peak usage where the tariff bills them - typically commercial electricity - marked Not applicable otherwise.
- Table
Charge Breakdown
Every current-period charge line normalized to a standard category (basic, supply, delivery, demand, environmental, fee, surcharge, tax) with its rate, quantity, and amount.
- Form
Charge Totals and Balance
The money reconciliation - current subtotal, taxes/fees, total current charges, previous balance, payments/credits, balance forward, and total due - with a footing check.
- Table
Cost Allocation Across Units
The per-unit or per-property breakout of a master-metered bill - unit, service address, meter, usage, allocated amount, and allocation basis (submetered, RUBS, square-footage, equal, as-billed).
- Table
Historical Usage
The prior-months usage/cost history the bill prints, month by month, for the usage-variance and seasonality check.
- Form
Duplicate Bill Screen
A duplicate-payment screen on the natural key of account number, service period, and amount, with a High/Medium/Low risk rating and rationale - the most common and costly utility-AP error.
- Table
Validation and Exceptions
The auditor's checklist - usage recomputation, charge and total footing, service-period validity, estimated reads, usage variance, balance-forward reconciliation, missing fields, and duplicate risk - one row each, Fail-first, with dollar impact.
- Form
GL Coding and Routing
Suggested expense category, property/cost center, allocation note, a CAM-recoverable prompt, and an approval-routing note driven by the exceptions - framed for the coder to confirm.
Prerequisites
- Your chart of accounts / utility expense categories and property or cost-center codes
- The account-to-property mapping for the portfolio
- Paid-invoice history for a definitive duplicate check
Human review
An AP specialist or property accountant reviews the flagged exceptions and each cited amount, confirms the suggested GL coding and any cost allocation, and clears or holds the bill before payment.
Where it fits
Utility accounts-payable invoice processing
Utility bills arrive for properties in the portfolio - by mail, email, PDF, or utility portal - and are captured into accounts payable, typically as non-PO invoices
This step
Utility bill extraction, validation, and coding
After
Who uses it
Grounded in
- No single governing standard - utility bill formats, rate schedules, and tariffs are set per provider and regulatorverified as of 2026-07-22
- Meter usage = (current read - previous read) x billing multiplier; billing-day and read-type conventions (Actual / Estimated / Customer-read)verified as of 2026-07-22
- RUBS (Ratio Utility Billing System) and submetering for allocating master-metered utility costs across unitsverified as of 2026-07-22
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See Utility Bill Extraction (AP) on your documents
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