What are duplicate bills?

Duplication billing issue are those whereby there are more than one invoice sent to a customer regarding the same service, product, or transaction. They can be duplicate charges that are usually identical or sometimes littered with small clerical mistakes, making charges to be a bit different. The level of duplication billing may range from a small problem to a financial dilemma of major proportions depending on the industry and amount

Duplicate billing is a problem common to a wide range of industries. Such industries include health care, utilities, and telecommunications, businesses commonly get confused with customers over bills, often leading to lengthy disputes and wasting resources. However, perhaps few people confront such an issue. That’s correct because most billing systems, especially those highly automated and very large in scale, sometimes create duplicate or wrong charges. This would be an acute need to prevent loss of money as well as customers’ satisfaction if they would know why there are duplicate bills and solutions that could help mitigate them.

Duplicate Billing Causes and Solutions

Although there are many reasons why duplicate bills arise, some common causes of duplicate bills include the following:

• Human error in manual data input
  Human error is considered one of the major reasons why duplicate bills can occur. This can easily take place when a person enters the same information several times during processing billing through manual entry. Heavy workloads in various offices can lead to this taking place almost instantly. The possibility of the above duplication increases if more than one department or person handles the billing responsibilities for a company.

For example, a medical administrator may pay to the same service twice for his patient billing. An erroneous entry created at that point of time might remain alive till the generation and transmission of a second bill to the customer even after its detection later.

• System / Software Errors
  Electronic billing systems, which were conceptualized to enhance processes, are error-prone in most cases. Technical mishaps or glitches sometimes sprout from the billing software, which might churn out the same bill if it had otherwise known that it had already printed a bill.

In addition, poor soft-ware configuration or outdated systems fail to harmonize the information carried by the departments or databases hence bringing in confusion along with duplicate entries.

• Poor departmental coordination
  Billing often involves multiple departments and many people working together in large organizations. Where such communication fails to take place across departments in large organizations, it can lead to billing. For instance, a customer care department may not notify the billing department that an invoice has already been issued and, therefore, results in generating a second bill.

Moreover, such coordination is also missing in organizations that use different software systems that cannot be well integrated. For example, the same billing information will end up duplicated because each system works in a standalone mode without giving their live updates.

• Errors in Batch Processing
  Billing systems can also be designed to batch process invoices in order to process large volumes of transactions efficiently. In the batch process, though, there are possible errors like retrying the same batch or wrong batch setting, thus creating multiples bills for one service or product. When a batch is transmitted various times, it will be sending to customers duplicate bills without first determining that the charge was already issued.
• Recurring Billing Issues
  Sometimes businesses using subscription services or recurring billing services end up sending one duplicate invoice to customers. This could mainly happen when the systems of its are not correctly configured. For instance, there is some delay or an error that occurs in processing a subscription payment within the framework of a single billing cycle. The customer would end up getting more than one bill for a given service period.

Similarly, if the billing cycles are not matched properly with the payment process, then for the same service or duration, a customer will be charged twice.

• Duplicates in Customer’s Data Base
  Most large organizations with significant customer databases will always have duplicate records or names. The situation arises when one customer is unintentionally registered more than once in a system. At such times the invoice generator in the billing software creates different invoices for the very same person or account. Most of the time, it is due to misspelling and spelling differences. Most of the duplications occur in the customer’s name since it is entered differently most of the time, or even different departments are filling in the same information into the system a few times.

Ways to Eliminate Duplicate Invoices

Fortunately, there are several steps a firm may take to prevent and cure duplicate invoices. This approach shall be a judicious combination of tech solutions, process improvements, and better communications.

• Install Automated Validation Checks
  One of the excellent methods to avoid duplicate bills is through automated validation checks within the billing systems. So, one can flag potential duplicates before sending them to customers. For example, cross-checking by means of invoices will ensure that no two bills are generated for the same service or product or transaction in a given time period.

In this regard, a business can actually set up alerts to warn employees in case the same record or transaction is captured so that they can follow it up not to worsen the situation.

• Improve Data Entry Policies
  Firm data entry procedures will reduce human error. Among some of those procedures include training employee on verification of data to input and maintenance of standardized forms for uniformity. Automated data entry software, including OCR software, reduce reliance on human entry and human errors created by that requirement for duplication.
• Interrelated Software Packages
  The departments should improve coordination through integrated software systems that allow for the sharing of real-time data throughout the organization. From this, information regarding billing is gathered on an up-to-date basis; it reduces the possibilities of bills being sent out as duplicates resulting from incorrect communication with other departments.

Most of the organizations have centralized data and one source of truth that holds the record for all transactions. This is done by using the ERP systems in consolidating data into one place. This eliminates the chance of inconsistencies between departments and makes sure there are no duplicate invoices.

• Track Batch Processing
  The businesses will have to monitor the batch processing activities closely so that proper invoicing can be ensured. In order to do that, this can be done with stringent batch controls like locking of batches post processing or taking prior supervisor approval for running the same batch for which the previous run yielded a list. This will prevent over-billing due to errors in the batches.

The batches can be checked often, especially in log files, to indicate repeating patterns or inconsistencies and thus act to dissuade unnecessary bills.

• Accurate Customer Records
  One of the issues that duplicate records on customers pose in business operations is the periodic auditing of the database to identify and merge duplicates. With data deduplication tools, duplicate records can automatically be identified by comparing fields in the name, address, and contact information. After identification, the duplicates may be merged or deleted from the system to avoid any future conflicts over billing.

This company should, therefore, design policies encouraging its customers to check their information for at least one time each year in order to minimize cases of duplicated records.

• It should confirm that it has a timely billing dispute process
  Even with the best streamlined systems, there is likely to be some occasion of double billing that will occur. As such, the business should always have in place a process in case a billing dispute arises. Reporting duplicate bills should be straightforward, and capable teams within businesses should be able to quickly investigate and find resolutions regarding such disputes.

Online forms, telephone support, and email, among others, are channels to solve problems in a way that is most convenient for the customer.

Conclusion
The most common problem is duplicate billing. It creates confusion and frustration to businesses and customers with resultant financial loss. Such risks can be avoided by businesses if they discover the reasons behind duplicate bills—either due to human error or an errant glitch in the system—and then apply appropriate solutions. Automated validation checks, proper data entry protocols, integrated software systems, and regular audits are the essential tools that can prevent duplicate bills and win customers’ trust.