· We will examine your monthly telephone charges to determine possible overcharging or credits due for discontinued services, and to ensure exact billing for provided services
· We will negotiate with telephone companies on your behalf to have the overcharges removed from service billing and to recover the maximum amount of adjustment credits or refunds for these past overcharges.
· We will review your present billing to determine if any changes can be made to the service type or configuration to enable you to achieve cost reductions in the future. Formal recommendations would be presented for any such changes and action would be taken only with your express approval.
· We will present periodic progress reports, usually on a monthly basis, during the course of the audit. At the conclusion of the audit, we will prepare a final Management Summary of the audit results for you.
Audit Details Telecommunications audits have two components:
a) Recovery Audit
b) Future Savings Audit
Recovery Audit
The purpose of the recovery audit is to secure credits or refunds for past overbilling by your telecommunications providers. Billing will be based upon a percentage of recoveries, after the credits have been posted to your bills or after refund checks have been received by you. To best describe the telecommunications recovery audit, we have listed below some of the areas we will be investigating on your behalf.
a) We will investigate all billed rates against published tariff. Where we find a difference, we will process a claim on your behalf. Wherever you are billed under contract or term agreement, we will check the billing against the agreement to ensure accuracy.
b) We will investigate the billing of separately billed features that may also be included in billed feature packages or product offerings. Also, we will investigate the billing of possible redundant features and the billing of inappropriate features.
c) We will check for duplicate directory listings, or listings that duplicate the free listings. Also we will search for listing for non-existent department or non-existent telephone numbers.
d) We will challenge billing for blocks of DID numbers without the supporting numbers shown.
e) We will search the billing for isolated features or other billing piece parts not associated with the billed lines or circuits (circuits or trunks may have been removed but billing portion remain). Also, we will make certain that where USOC’s are bulked together on CSR’s, the totals equal of total number of associated trunks/lines.
f) We will check the accuracy in the calculation of CTX trunk equivalents, FCC end user charges, etc.
g) We will investigate the billing of all obsolete equipment, including various protective connecting arrangements to see if still connected. We will search for any billing of equipment by BOC’s, prohibited by the MFJ.
h) We will review the listing of hunt group members to be certain that those lines billed for hunting exist and are part of the actual hunt group. In some jurisdictions, billing of hunting should not be (but sometimes is applied to the last line of a hunt group.
i) In addition to reviewing rates for Special Service or private line circuits, we will check actual wire center to wire center mileage against a NECA database, for accuracy. We will also check bills for circuits that cross telco jurisdictions to make certain that the percentages billed by each telco are correct. We will check each circuit to make certain the proper type local channel, proper type signaling proper type inter-office mileage is applied.
j) We will call all Remote Call Forwarding lines to make certain that they are actually programmed to reach the target numbers and that the target numbers are still active for you.
k) We will make sure that you are receiving the proper allowance or discount on existing calling plans. We will make sure that you are receiving the proper discounts to which you are entitled.
l) We will check the long distance portion of your local exchange bills to be certain that you are not being charged for calls for an inter-exchange carrier at a casual call rate. We will also check to make sure that there is no billing by or for any unauthorized carrier.
m) We will investigate Special Assembly billing to be sure that the service is still provided, needed and billed in accordance with the rate agreement. We will also make certain that the service is not now also available under tariff at a lower rate.
n) We will review the billing of all non-pub charges to be certain that there is not other published service with the same name and address. In most jurisdictions, where this occurs, the non-pub billing should be at no charge.
o) On PRI billing, we will check the number of B channels billed to make sure they do not exceed 23 per PRI and that the FCC access charges, USF & # portability charges do not exceed 5 per PRI.
p) We will check tax calculations for accuracy and will make certain that discounts are deducted before the tax calculations are made.