Billing Process

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ISO-NE PUBLIC

Billing Process

This document provides a basic description of the ISO New England billing process and relevant timelines.

Throughout you will see references to billing-related documents that contain additional details about the billing

process, such as deadline tables, charts, and sections of the ISO New England Transmission, Markets and Services

Tariff (ISO tariff), including Section 1, Exhibit ID, “ISO New England Billing Policy

.” These documents are available

on the ISO New England website. To stay current with changes to the settlement processes, join and view webinar

presentations from the

Quarterly Settlements Forum and subscribe to All Notices.

Overview of the Billing Process

The settlement billing process comprises a number of steps, as follows, and as shown in the figure:

• After the ISO receives market inputs, it performs the settlements and issues the results to customers via

Market Information Server (MIS) reports.

• The ISO then issues MIS billing statements on the basis of the settlement results.

• Customers review the content of their statements and pay their invoices via electronic fund transfer (EFT).

• After the ISO collects all invoice payments, it pays the remittances.

• Customers who wish to dispute any items on their statements may initiate billing disputes, after paying

their invoices, by submitting a request for billing adjustment (RBA).

• The ISO collects meter data revisions and any corrections to market input data, after which it reruns the

settlements and any approved requests for billing adjustments.

• Resettlements resulting from the data-reconciliation process (DRP) or requested billing adjustments

appear on a future billing statement.

Billing Process

Inital Settlement

Statement Issuance

Statement

Release

Schedule

and Dates

Statement

Contents

Statement

Validation

via MIS

reports

Payments

via EFT

Invoice and

Remittance

Advice

Payments

Data-Reconcilation Process (DRP)

Settlement

& Billing Dispute

Statement Issuance

Statement

Release

Schedule

and Dates

Statement

Contents

Statement

Validation

via MIS

reports

Payments

via EFT

Invoice and

Remittance

Advice

Payments

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The sections below discuss the various aspects of the initial and data-reconciliation billing processes, including the

statement issuance, schedule, and contents, and the validation and payment processes.

Statement Issuance

The ISO processes and issues the initial, DRP, and billing dispute billing statements according to set schedules.

Before releasing a billing statement, the ISO issues a forecasted billing schedule and MIS reports also within set

schedules. The billing statement payment procedures are standard, as well.

Statement Release Schedule and Dates

The billing process is performed twice weekly. Statements for hourly services are issued each Monday and each

Wednesday, or on the following business day if Monday or Wednesday is a Settlement Holiday. Once a month, on

the first Monday after the tenth of the month, the statement includes both hourly services and nonhourly services

(referred to as a monthly statement). Also included on the monthly statement are monthly transmission charges.

The ISO document, Statement Issuance, provides a summary of invoice issuance dates and their associated

payment and remittance due dates.

The ISO typically releases billing statements by 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time, except for special billings. Customers are

responsible for retrieving their statements via their secure MIS file-transfer protocol (FTP) site.

The following table is a generic calendar month for when statements are released.

Sample Monthly Calendar for Billing Statements

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Issue Statements

for Hourly

Services

Issue Statement

for Hourly

Services

Issue Statements

for Hourly

Services

Issue Statement

for Hourly

Services

Issue Monthly

Statement

Issue Statement

for Hourly

Services

*Settlements

Holiday

Issue Statements

for Hourly

Services

Issue Statement

for Hourly

Services

Issue Statements

for Hourly

Services

Issue Statement

for Hourly

Services

*Refer to Settlement Holiday

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Statement Contents

The Sample Invoice and Remittance Advice

page on the ISO’s website provides a sample billing statement,

including interactive links, describing each line item that may appear on a customer’s bill and indicating whether it

is a weekly or monthly charge.

When a customer retrieves an invoice via its secure FTP site, three MIS files are available for download: the

BL_INVOICE and BL_DETAILS, which are CSV files, and BL_PRINT, which is a PDF file.

The information in the BL_INVOICE and BL_DETAILS files is presented in the ISO’s Market Information Server

reporting convention; positive dollar values are payments customers will receive, and negative values are charges

customers owe. Customers use these CSV files to electronically download the billing information into their

systems.

The information in the BL_PRINT file is presented as either an invoice or a remittance advice, indicated in the top-

right corner of the statement. The net dollar value is always positive; the statement type determines whether the

customer is due a payment or must pay a charge.

• An invoice is issued when the total charges exceed the total credits for the given billing period. The

customer owes to the ISO the net total of the charges and credits (Invoice Total).

• A remittance advice is issued when the total credits exceed the total charges for the given billing period.

The ISO owes the customer the net total of the credits and charges (Remittance Total).

Every line item on the statement has a billing period (“from” and “to” dates). The billing periods for the various line

items reflect differences in the timing of settlements and the timing of retroactive adjustments.

For every bill issued, a bill job aid is posted to the Understanding the Bill

page of the ISO’s website. The bill job aid

contains a detailed list of line items and the associated billing period(s) that may appear on a statement, which can

assist customers in accurately reconciling their bill. It also contains hyperlinks for obtaining settlement-related

information and verifying invoice and remittance advice line items.

Before each bill is posted, a Forecasted Billing Schedule is posted to the Understanding the Bill page, which

forecasts the billing periods to be settled for the upcoming statement.

Statement Validation

Before each statement is posted, MIS reports are made available to each customer, specific to that customer’s

market and settlement activity. Through the MIS reports, each customer can view the actual data used for each

settlement that determines the charges and credits for each billing period. Customers can retrieve MIS reports via

secure FTP, the same way they retrieve statements.

The following resources on the Understand the Bill

webpage can be helpful to customers:

The Report Descriptions, Templates, and Samples page on the ISO’s website provides a complete listing of each

MIS report, including templates and samples of each report, to assist in understanding the format and content of

the MIS reports. Each report name links to a PDF document describing each column of the corresponding report.

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The “XLTX” link for each report provides an Excel template of the corresponding report with no data. The “CSV”

link provides an Excel sample of the corresponding report with sample data.

The Billable Line Item Descriptions

page on the ISO’s website includes links to descriptive pages on each of the

markets, which provide information on the following topics:

• Description of the market service

• Links to documents with more details on the market service

• Who can expect to receive credits and charges on the market settlement

• Billing adjustments associated with the market

• Line items on the bill associated with the market

• Settlement MIS reports

• Calculation summary for the market service

• MIS reporting Electric Quarterly Report (EQR) information for FERC

Invoice and Remittance Advice Payments

Typically, invoices are due two business days from the date they are issued, and remittance advices are paid four

days after the date they are issued. In the event the bill is issued after 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time, invoices are due

three business days from the issue date, and remittance advices are paid five business days after the issue date.

Invoices must be paid to the ISO by EFT via wire or an automated clearing house (ACH) transaction to the ISO

account listed on the invoice. Checks are not accepted by the ISO for settlement invoices. Section 3.1 of the

Billing

Policy contains additional details on invoice payments to the ISO.

Invoice amounts are due in full by the due date, even if the charges are being disputed (see the Billing Disputes

section below). If a customer’s invoice is not paid in full by the due date, the payment default process will be

initiated, interest and late fees will be charged, and the customer could face suspension from all markets.

Data-Reconciliation Process Settlement and Billing Disputes

Customers should review and verify the accuracy of their MIS reports. Data discrepancies for inputs that meet

certain criteria are resettled through the data-reconciliation process (DRP). Customers must follow a specified

process to report and reconcile any billing discrepancies.

Data-Reconciliation Process

The data-reconciliation process reconciles data errors and meter data revisions for final resettlement after the

initial bill has been released. Customers must submit to the ISO changes to metered value data before the

metering and resettlement deadlines. Additional details are available in Market Rule 1 (MR1),

Manual 28, Section

9, “Accounting;” MR1, Section III.3.6, “Data Reconciliation,” and Section III.3.7, “Eligibility for Billing Adjustments;”;

and the ISO tariff, Section 1, Exhibit ID, “ISO New England Billing Policy.”

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The DRP billing is performed only once for each obligation month and is included in the monthly statement issued

five months after the operating month. As an example, the DRP for the operating month of January is billed on the

monthly statement issued in June. The ISO does not process the resettlements for early submissions of corrected

data until after the submittal deadline. MIS reports for the DRP are issued in the fourth month after the obligation

month. A monthly/resettlement timeline

for an operating month, posted on the website, visually explains this

process.

Since the monthly statement contains both the initial settlements for the current obligation period, as well as the

DRP settlements for a prior obligation period, multiple line items for the same service appear on the statement.

Like line items can be identified by their billing period (“from” and “to” dates). The DRP line-item amount on the

statement is the difference between the resettlement and the initial settlement. The difference can be validated

by subtracting the total amount settled on the initial MIS report from the total amount on the DRP MIS report.

Billing Disputes

Customers can submit to the ISO several types of requests for billing adjustments for disputes regarding a line item

on the bill:

• Requested Billing Adjustment (RBA): Relates to errors in the application of the ISO’s tariff

• Meter Data Error RBA (MDE RBA): Relates to correcting meter data that were inaccurate after DRP

revisions

In all cases, the customer must pay the invoice amount in full before requesting a billing adjustment. To submit a

valid RBA, the customer must meet certain criteria within defined procedures and deadlines.

The ISO New England Billing Policy, Exhibit ID, describes the procedures for submitting an RBA.

Market Rule 1, Sections III.3.6 to III.3.8, contain the eligibility requirements for submitting an MDE RBA. Manual 28,

Section 6, describes the MDE RBA process. To begin this process, a customer must complete the MDE RBA Form

by the MDE RBA submission limit (i.e., deadline) and submit the revised meter data to the ISO by the MDE RBA

data-submission deadline.

The Requested Billing Adjustment & Meter Data Error Correction Request Summary (Billing Dispute Overview)

provides a summary diagram of the two billing dispute processes, including a timeline for the MDE RBA. Specific

dates associated with MDE RBA submittals are in the

Metering and Resettlement Deadlines file.

The ISO’s Billing Disputes webpage provides links for the submission forms, meter data submission due dates for

MDE RBAs, and the status of existing billing disputes.

Billing disputes completed through an awarded RBA status are settled immediately in the next monthly bill after

the appeal period ends. MDE RBAs are settled in the monthly bill issued eleven months after the operating month.

MIS reports are distributed to all customers for the MDE RBA obligation month. Settlements for RBAs are included

in the monthly bill forecast schedule, as well as in the monthly bill job aid. Multiple line items could appear on the

statement; the billing period (“from” and “to” dates) of each line item defines the obligation period of the

settlement. The line item amount for the MDE RBA on the statement is the difference between the MDE RBA and

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DRP settlement. The MDE RBA billing adjustment can be validated by subtracting the total amount settled in the

DRP MIS report from the total amount settled in the MDE RBA MIS report.

Questions and Answers on the Billing Process

Specific information about ISO New England billing processes and answers to questions frequently asked by

customers about billing-related documents and how to obtain them, as well as billing-related rules, processes, and

services are found in Participant Support Q&A—Billing Process.

Reference Material

The references listed below identify the sections in the ISO New England Transmission, Markets and Services Tariff

(ISO tariff) that refer to additional details of the billing process:

• ISO New England, Manual M-28, Market Rule 1 Accounting

• Section I, ISO New England Billing Policy, Exhibit ID,

• Section II.8, Billing and Invoicing; Accounting

• Section III.2.9A, Final Real-Time Prices, Real-Time Reserve Clearing, and Regulation Clearing Prices

• Section III.2.9B, Final Day-Ahead Energy Market Results

• Section III.3, Accounting and Billing

• Section.III.9.4.1, Forward Reserve Clearing Price and Forward Reserve Obligation Publication and

Correction

• Section III, Appendix A, Market Monitoring, Reporting, and Market Power Mitigation

• Section III, Appendix B, Imposition of Sanctions by the ISO

• Section IV.A.6.6, Rebilling Requests: