A growing fast-food chain of restaurants has 100+ outlets across 30 cities. Rajeev is the Head of Finance over there. It is a task for his team to collect electricity, water, and internet bills from each location every month. They rely on spreadsheets, WhatsApp messages, manual approvals, and local vendor receipts.
By the time the data reaches Rajeev’s desk, it’s already too late to ask the right questions – Why did the Jaipur branch’s power bill spike this month? Why was the Bengaluru office charged a late fee again?
Sheela, who is the CFO there, has been struggling to find answers to her questions. What is the total amount spent in utilities across all branches for each quarter. She has been wondering how much cash has been locked in utility payments before the authorities approve the payments.
This is the invisible chaos behind utility bill payments – often an ignored area quietly bleeding a company dry. And if you’re a CFO or finance leader, chances are, you’re in the same boat.
The Real Cost of Paying Your Utility Bills
Sanjana is the finance controller of a consumer durables company with 80 showrooms across 25 cities. She knows that inefficient processes are a major barrier to managing utility bill payments. However, in the absence of a holistic business spend management system or an integrated utility bill payments solution, her company is leaking cash.
She once tried breaking down the cost of her internal process inefficiencies.
- 80 branches – multiple utility vendors including electricity, water, internet, telephone, etc., with multiple timelines, and multiple bill formats.
- Manual processing – hours of chasing, approving, scanning, and filing
- Delayed payments – late fees, service disruptions, and compliance risks
- Lack of visibility – no clear picture of utility spends across the 80 branches her company operates
Learn more about how digital bill payments are preventing fraud in utility and rent payments.
In Sanjana’s case, these inefficiencies were leading to cash leakages of over Rs. 18 lakhs a year, primarily through duplicate payments, missed rebates, delayed penalties, and sheer administrative fatigue. The worst part is that she knew she had to fix it, but the processes weren’t helping her. The need of the hour was to implement a utility bill payment solution that caters to the requirements of multiple branches.
Inefficient Processes in Utility Payments Cost You
BROME Reduces Costs Across Branches
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The Visibility Void – A CFO’s Worst Fear
Utility bills like water, electricity, gas, internet, etc., are recurring, decentralized, and often fall below the radar. Big-ticket spends like capex, procurement, and payroll get more attention. On the other hand, due to their sheer nature, utility bill payments get ignored, and so does the cumulative impact of these recurring costs.
Lack of real-time visibility into who’s paying what, when, and why puts you in a blind spot. Some of the effects of it can be:
- Overpayments due to billing errors
- Unclaimed GST credits
- Vendor fraud and duplicate billing
- Missed opportunities for renegotiating contracts
Rajeev’s company had four electricity providers in Maharashtra, with three in Mumbai alone. Each provider had its own invoice cycle and billing format. It is not difficult to imagine how tedious it can get to track them manually for multi-branch operations.
Dealing with Multiple Vendors at Various Locations?
BROME Helps You Negotiate Better with Multiple Vendors
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How Utility Bill Payment Solutions Can Save the Day
Imagine if Rajeev or Sanjana had a dashboard that showed them exactly how much the company is spending on utilities, broken down by location, utility type, and month. When every bill is scanned, verified, and automatically routed for approval, there will be fewer chances of delays, duplicate payments, or late fees. That’s the power of a robust utility bill payment solution, designed for multi-branch operations. As a company that is heavily invested in business spend management, we recommend that CFOs adopt solutions offering:
- Ability to extract utility bills from emails and portals
- Real-time verification of bills for duplication or any other anomalies
- Automated approval workflows to avoid unnecessary delays
- Pre-scheduled payments through integrated banking channels and UPI
- Real-time reports for finance and audit
Along with Rajeev and Sanjana, CFOs and their teams across the board can cut processing time and eliminate late fees. More importantly, as a CFO or a finance controller, you can get the much-needed visibility and control on utility bill payments and overall business spend management.
Often Paying Late Fees for Utility Bills Across Branches?
Get Timely Reminders for 25+ Utility Types with BROME
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Compliance, Control, and Cost Savings – How BROME is the Most Suited Solution
Companies must ensure that every transaction complies with statutory regulations and internal policies. From GST input credits to audit trails, every rupee spent on utilities needs to be justified. An automated utility bill payment solution like BROME (Branch Recurring Operating Monthly Expenses) helps achieve compliance across multiple branches. It also ensures:
- Centralized utility payments for all branches from a single platform
- Utility bills for various types across branches are properly archived and audit-ready
- Maximum savings with early payment discounts
- GST data is accurately captured
- No manual edits or tampering. Every transaction is traceable
- Get timely reminders for 25+ utility types to avoid any late fees or service disruptions
- Compliance with policies since any out-of-policy spend gets flagged before or while it is incurred
- Reduced spending with exclusive rewards and cashback benefits
With insights from multiple branches captured in BROME, you can negotiate better contracts with utility providers. You can identify consumption patterns across locations, you can consolidate usage, reduce wastage, and drive down costs.
Untracked Utility Bill Payments May Lead to Cash Leakage
BROME Helps You with Real-time Tracking
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Final Thoughts
In the absence of a utility bill payment solution, business spend management becomes difficult, and the chances of cash leakage are much higher in utility bill payments.
While utility bill payments may be just another administrative expense, they represent a recurring, predictable, and controllable cost — if managed right. For CFOs and finance professionals, modern utility bill payment solutions are no longer a luxury, they’re a strategic imperative. One must note that visibility leads to control, and control prevents cash leakage.
If you’re still managing utility bills the old-school way, maybe it’s time to switch to an automated utility bill payment solution.
