ecova platform handbook

ECOVA PLATFORM HANDBOOK

CONFIDENTIAL 1 Ecova Platform

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LOGIN PAGE ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

LOGIN ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 3

THE DASHBOARD ............................................................................................................................................................................ 4

THE DASHBOARD ..................................................................................................................................................................... 4

SAVINGS ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

DISCOVER MORE ...................................................................................................................................................................... 5

CONTACTS .................................................................................................................................................................................. 5

CHARTS ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 6

THE CHARTS ............................................................................................................................................................................... 6

ACCOUNTS PAYABLE SNAPSHOT ...................................................................................................................................... 7

EXPENSE SNAPSHOT ............................................................................................................................................................... 7

USAGE OVER TIME ................................................................................................................................................................... 7

TOP LOCATIONS ....................................................................................................................................................................... 7

LOCATION INDEX ............................................................................................................................................................................ 8

LOCATION INDEX ..................................................................................................................................................................... 8

SAVINGS .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 9

SAVINGS ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 9

PROCESSING TRENDS ............................................................................................................................................................. 9

PERFORMANCE DRIVERS....................................................................................................................................................... 9

SAVINGS BREAKDOWN .......................................................................................................................................................... 9

PAYABLES ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 10

PAYABLES ................................................................................................................................................................................. 10

PENDING CONSOLIDATIONS ........................................................................................................................................... 10

CONSOLIDATED BILLS ......................................................................................................................................................... 11

FINANCIAL FILES .................................................................................................................................................................... 13


SERVICES FEES ........................................................................................................................................................................ 13

SEARCH ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 14

SEARCH ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 14

LOCATION PAGE ........................................................................................................................................................................... 15

LOCATION PAGE .................................................................................................................................................................... 15

EXPENSE SNAPSHOT ............................................................................................................................................................ 15

USAGE OVER TIME ................................................................................................................................................................ 15

LOCATION MAP ..................................................................................................................................................................... 15

ACCOUNTS............................................................................................................................................................................... 16

DETAILS ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 17

LOCATION INFORMATION ................................................................................................................................................ 18

CONTACTS ...................................................................................................................................................................... 18

ADDRESS ......................................................................................................................................................................... 18

SQUARE FOOTAGE ...................................................................................................................................................... 18

ATTRIBUTES .................................................................................................................................................................... 18

LOCATION AND SIZE ATTRIBUTES ........................................................................................................................ 18

ADDITIONAL SERVICES ....................................................................................................................................................... 18

REPORTING...................................................................................................................................................................................... 19

SAVINGS REPORTS ................................................................................................................................................................ 22

SAVE-AS FUNCTIONALITY.................................................................................................................................................. 22

BILL IMAGE LINKS .................................................................................................................................................................. 23

BILL IMAGES TO PDF ............................................................................................................................................................ 23

UNITS OF WORK .................................................................................................................................................................... 23

DEFINING UNITS OF WORK ............................................................................................................................................... 24

RECORDING UNITS OF WORK ................................................................................................................................................. 25

RECORDING UNITS OF WORK .......................................................................................................................................... 25

INDIVIDUALLY ......................................................................................................................................................................... 25

IN BULK...................................................................................................................................................................................... 26

MONITORING UNITS OF WORK ...................................................................................................................................... 26


LOGIN PAGE

LOGIN The username to login will be your company email address and a password of your choice. The password must meet at least 3 of the following 4 criteria:

♦ Upper case letter

♦ Lower case letter

♦ Number

♦ Symbol

To protect your account, the password will expire every 90 days. You will receive a reminder email 7 days prior to expiration to prompt you to choose a new password. You may ask for assistance if you ever forget your password.


THE DASHBOARD

THE DASHBOARD The Dashboard is your main landing page, which gives you a brief overview of many items that are available on the Platform. Below is a list of the webports and the functions of each.


SAVINGS Savings is a snapshot of 12 months of savings as a percentage of service fees. The blue line is the number of bills that have been processed, the red line percentage of fees compared to the savings.

DISCOVER MORE Discover more contains links to other relevant programs at Ecova, so you can always be up to date.

CONTACTS Contacts show the primary Ecova contact for your account, with access to all team members serving you.


CHARTS

THE CHARTS The charts are the main portion of your dashboard, which are customizable and interactive. The charts on the dashboard can be configured to each user so that only relevant charts will appear. Currently there are 4 options available: Accounts Payable, Expense, Usage Over Time and Top Locations.

All of these charts are consistent in their functionality, which is represented by the 3 icons in the upper right corner.

♦ The “diamond” icon opens the report so you can drill right into the data

♦ The “printer” icon prints the chart/graph

♦ The “down arrow” icon downloads the chart to save offline


ACCOUNTS PAYABLE SNAPSHOT Accounts payable snapshot displays the costs based on the service type and your company’s assigned General Ledger codes. It allows you to drill down to specific information such as the GL level. Use the drop down arrows to select the option you prefer. If you hover over the bar it will show you the value.

EXPENSE SNAPSHOT Expense snapshot displays the billing costs over a 3-year period. View the chart in the 3 annual bars or click on any bar to drill down to a monthly view. The chart can also be configured to be calendar or actual data. This chart allows you to drill down to different attributes and service types.

USAGE OVER TIME Usage over time displays the utility usage over a 2-year time period. The chart will allow you to drill down to the different attributes. The legend on the right with the years is interactive, so you can click on one of time periods and it will remove it from the graph, or click again and it returns.

TOP LOCATIONS Top locations is the last chart option, which is similar to a level of benchmarking. It compares the locations based on cost; however, you can change to usage, cost per square feet, use per square feet or cost per unit. The results show you the top 10 locations in your portfolio from highest to lowest. (Potentially could be more than 10, if two locations had the same value)

Click on the pins to see location details or select location from the chart.


LOCATION INDEX

LOCATION INDEX Location index is accessed from the “My Company” drop down. This index, like other pages on Ecova Platform, is displayed in a grid and lists all site locations in your company. The grid format allows easy sorting and filtering by any column heading in the grid. Grids are also easily exportable to Excel or CSV.


SAVINGS

SAVINGS Savings is also accessed from the “My Company” drop down and provides a deeper dive into the saving snapshot on the dashboard.

PROCESSING TRENDS Processing trends is a snapshot of 12 months of bills that have been processed, and your spend. The blue line is the number of bills that have been processed, the red line is the dollar amount spent.

PERFORMANCE DRIVERS Performance drivers are the details of the numbers of bills processed, which of those had exceptions that were addressed by Ecova, and of those, which ones generated additional savings.

SAVINGS BREAKDOWN Savings breakdown analyzes the generated savings from the Performance Drivers section and breaks down where each of these amounts came from and what percentage of total savings this represents.


PAYABLES

PAYABLES Payables is the heart of the bill-payment portion of Ecova’s expense management service. Included in this area is:

♦ Pending Consolidation

♦ Consolidated Bills

♦ Financial Files

♦ Service Fees

PENDING CONSOLIDATIONS Pending consolidations is the area where the bills that we are currently processing are gathered. You can view this section at any time. For example, if you are waiting for a specific bill to arrive, this is where you would find it first.

The results are displayed in a grid format, allowing you to sort and filter your results by any column in the grid simply by clicking the white column heading. This function will help you drill down to the information you are looking for.

These results below are sorted by due date, then by vendor:


CONSOLIDATED BILLS Consolidated bills are the bills that have been presented to you in a consolidation. Consolidation dates will vary depending on your specific schedule; however the newest consolidation will always be on the top.


In the Consolidation Details view, you can drill even further into the details by clicking “details” again, which will give you individual bill details. All bills are presented in Ecova’s standardized format so you can see an “apples-to-apples” comparison of bill data.

This view will give you important information such as if the bill has consolidated, when the payment was sent and how it was sent. It also includes SPL numbers, line by line item charges and bills notes if applicable. You can also click the “Bill Image” which will bring up the bill image that was scanned in or the electronic version that was received from the utility.


FINANCIAL FILES Financial files are your GL files and/or your Cost Estimation Tool (CET). This is the place they are stored on the Platform in case you need access to them at any time. Generally you will be receiving these via FTP or email.

Please Note: There is nothing about the consolidation process that is changing. Your financial files will still get posted to your FTP or emailed if those processes are in place for your company already.

If you click on GL or CET it will give you the option to open or save. If you open the file it will be your text file or Excel file that can be loaded directly to your accounting system.

SERVICES FEES Service fees are the fees paid to Ecova. Depending on the services you are contracted with, there could be more than one invoice for any given month. Viewing Service Fees is a separate permission from the other Payables items so not every user with access to the Payables will have access to the Service Fees.


SEARCH

SEARCH Search is much like bill finder or site at a glance and it lets you search for Bills, Locations or Vendors. The searching is Google-like in nature, so you can type a large list of different search criteria without having to specify the exact value. Search criteria for bills; for instance, includes the location name, location #, address, city, state, zip, Vendor Name, Account Number, Summary account number, check number, meter #, Service Point Location and even Ecova bill ID.

There is also an advanced search option for searching specific items. The results come back in a grid format, allowing you to sort and filter to narrow down the results by clicking the white column headers.

You can also add filters to the results. The example shows that there was a filter added to the location name so only the results containing “027-Paramus” were showing.

Adding to that, we have sorted the vendor field so the utilities are ascending, making the results even more accurate.


LOCATION PAGE

LOCATION PAGE Once you find the location you are looking for, click on the location name to open the Location Details Page.

Note: for those users upgrading from the Performance IQ platform, this page is very similar to the site at a glance page.

EXPENSE SNAPSHOT Expense snapshot is an overview of what your expenses have been for this particular site for the last 3 years.

USAGE OVER TIME Usage over time is a year over year comparison of usage for this location

LOCATION MAP Location map is a Google map at your fingertips with zoom, street view and satellite view.


ACCOUNTS Accounts is a workspace where the charts and graphs are still interactive, but it’s easy access to drill into the data behind it, rather than running a report. This is organized by vendor showing the 3 most recent bills.

If you have electric and gas on one account, you will only see it listed once, with the breakdown for each as shown:


DETAILS Details link allows you to drill into the information behind the billing. It gives you an Ecova composite of the high level information as well as the line by line data pulled directly from the bill. All bills are presented in Ecova’s standardized format so you can see an “apples-to-apples” comparison of bill data.

Notice the green arrows on the top of the page. These take you back and forth from bill to bill for this specific account.


LOCATION INFORMATION Location information gives you all the details for the location you select, including the address, a place to store contacts (e.g., the store manager), attributes (also known as groupings) and square footage information.

CONTACTS

Contacts are those contacts you want to track at each location (optional).

ADDRESS

Address is the location’s physical address.

SQUARE FOOTAGE

Square footage is tracked over time, so if you expand a location, it will create a new record. This will ensure that your reports reflect the right sq footage for that span of time.

ATTRIBUTES

The custom attributes feature allows you to categorize or group locations together based on similar criteria.

LOCATION AND SIZE ATTRIBUTES

Location and size are standard options provided to all clients. Click Edit to update any of these values for a single location IF you have permissions enabled.

ADDITIONAL SERVICES Additional services are any other products or services that you have with Ecova, such as Energy Supply Management or Carbon Management. The information for these will still be housed in its current location; however with your single login, everything is now accessible through the Ecova Platform.


REPORTING

Reports now lets you pick and choose what you would like in your report then gives you a display of what it will look like on the same screen.

Some of the Platform enhancements include:

♦ Actual or Calendar-Normalized data is available with a click

♦ Option to choose specific locations

♦ Choose one or more service types


♦ Include or exclude Taxes and One Time charges (One Time charges are charges from the vendor which can sometimes be a credit and skew the numbers)

♦ Visible fields lets you choose what columns are in your report and how the report is aggregated.

♦ Quick filter for US and Canada

♦ Ability to report on any attribute

♦ Vendor pick a single vendor

Under the report options you will see a report preview. If this is not exactly what you would like, you can make changes then hit apply again and it will reconfigure the report with the new information requested.


Some of the more common report fields are set as defaults. However, you can uncheck them and change the ways the report aggregates. Currently this report is set to aggregate by month, but by removing month from the visible fields, it forces the report to aggregate by location instead.

Now the report provides a 3 month total for cost, usage and cost per unit for each location.

Aggregate the data in any way you need. For example, get an analysis by state by simply removing Location # and Location Name, which forces the report to aggregate by state.

Please Note:

Taxes are allocated over all service types by percentage

If you remove the service type, you will get zero usage as it is more than one service type.


SAVINGS REPORTS Any report you create can also be saved, shared or scheduled. Shared reports cannot be saved or overwritten by anyone but the creator, they can only be viewed. Private reports are the only ones that can be scheduled. To save a report, simply click Save and then name the report:

You can also save the report to be private or scheduled to be shared. If you choose to schedule the report, choose your own delivery options.

SAVE-AS FUNCTIONALITY The Save-As option, allows you to edit your report and then save it as a new version with a new name, keeping the original saved report intact.

With the Re-save/Schedule option, you can edit the report and save those edits over the top of the original report. You can also edit any schedule you have for the report’s automated delivery.


BILL IMAGE LINKS Bill image links is another great feature that is built into reports. It allows you to securely share links to bill images via an Excel spreadsheet. To build a report containing this information, simply choose one of the bill option reports:

♦ Invoice by Date

♦ Invoice Detail

♦ Late Fees

♦ Savings Detail reports

Then from the “Visible Field” option select "Bill Image Link" as a visible field in the report. When the report is exported to Excel, this creates the link for accessing the image outside the Platform.

BILL IMAGES TO PDF The platform also allows you to create a single PDF of up to 50 bill images. From the Bill Results page, filter the data to 50 images or less. Then click on the PDF icon in the upper right hand corner of the grid (next to the Excel and CSV export buttons) and it will create the PDF document for you.

UNITS OF WORK This new feature of the Ecova Platform allows you to define, record, and monitor the units that measure productivity and performance at each of your locations. After recording this information, you can use your Units of Work to track utility performance within the Reports area of the platform.


DEFINING UNITS OF WORK You can define up to 10 different Units of Work values for your company. For best results, base your units on indicators that are easily measurable and that have some correlation with the utilities your company consumes.

To define Units of Work values for your company, first click the “Manage Location Attributes” in the Admin menu of the navigation bar. Next, click the ‘Manage Units of Work’ option on the page.

Please Note: you can also edit the names of previously created Units of Work by clicking ‘Edit Existing Units of Work’ in this overlay.


RECORDING UNITS OF WORK

RECORDING UNITS OF WORK Now that you’ve defined your Units of Work, you can begin recording values for them to be used in the reporting. Units of Work values can be recorded at each location individually or for all locations in bulk.

INDIVIDUALLY On the Location Detail page, click the Edit button within the Units of Work section. An overlay will open allowing you to add/edit/delete values for the units of work at the single location.

Clicking the green ‘Edit’ button within the Units of Work section will open the Edit Units of Work overlay.

Here, you can manually input Units of Work data for a single location.


IN BULK Go to the Admin / Units of Work option in the navigation menu. Click to download the template, specifying the date range (up to 24 months) you want to load. Input the values for any/all locations in the file. And last, upload the file back to the Platform.

MONITORING UNITS OF WORK Within the Reports section, select either the Index Report – Trendline or Index Report – Year over Year. These reports are designed to benchmark locations against each other based on common units. The default unit is Square Footage, but with the new Units of Work feature, you can now use your recorded Units of Work for your benchmark reporting.

Use the ‘Cost / Unit of Work’ and ‘Use / Unit of Work’ parameters in either of the Index reports to view your utility usage and/or cost compared against your Unit of Work values. With this feature, you have the power to compare your locations against each other and identify which locations are performing better than others based on your own performance indicators.

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