Pairing of Virtual Accounts

A Vendor offering both Supply and Distribution services for a specific Location, translates in UBM in 2 separate Virtual Accounts: 1 Supply account and 1 Distribution account. They can be found by selecting a Location from the “Locations” tab, and going to the “Virtual Accounts” area for that Location.

The “Pair” functionality will streamline the process of tying the correct Supply account to the correct Distribution account together as a whole.

The “Pair” feature is available for the following utilities only, which have a Supply and Distribution component:

• Electric
• Natural Gas
• Lighting

This functionality has a huge impact on other downstream functionalities like Analytics, Energy Star and GHG, where one usage needs to be sent out for cases where we have Supply and Distribution.

Automatic Pairing is done on a Virtual Account’s 1st mapping or re-mapping to a Location.

For 2 mapped accounts to get automatically Paired, they need to have the same following criteria:

• Vendor
• Billing Account ID
• SAID
• Meter ID
• Utility
• + Type (1 account Distribution and 1 account Supply)

Once Paired, a “Pair” label with 2 dotted lines will be present in the Virtual Accounts area for that Location, marking the 2 accounts as a Pair.

If only 1 account of the 2 needed, is present in UBM (either Supply or Distribution account), that Virtual Account will be marked as “Need Pair”.

A Virtual Account having the “Need Pair” label signals the fact that UBM only received one half of the information and is expecting the other half.

Once the other half comes in, and the Virtual Account is mapped to the same Location as the existing one, and has all the matching Pairing criteria (mentioned above), the 2 accounts will be automatically Paired, replacing the “Need Pair” label with the “Pair” label and dotted lines.

All Virtual Accounts labeled “Need Pair”, for all Locations, will be present in the “Unpaired Virtual Accounts” tab, which can be accessed by going to the “Exceptions” area in the Left Navigation.

The Virtual Accounts that get Paired automatically will no longer appear in this list once Paired.

Two Virtual Accounts can be manually Paired by going to the “Exceptions” → “Unpaired Virtual Accounts” tab.

Select the checkbox for the 2 Virtual Accounts that you want to Pair, and then select the “Pair” link present in the top right area above the tables.

Manual Pairing let’s you Pair accounts even if they don’t have all the matching criteria needed for automatic Pairing, but still need to be a Pair.

There are some rules for Manual Pairing:

• both accounts have to be from the same Location
• both accounts have to be from the same Utility
• 1 account has to be Supply and 1 account has to be Distribution

Once the 2 accounts are Paired, they will no longer be part of the Exceptions list and they will appear as a “Pair” in the “Virtual Accounts” area.

You can Unpair already Paired Virtual Accounts by selecting the “Locations” tab from the Left Navigation, selecting a Location from the list and then selecting the “Virtual Accounts” tab

Any 2 accounts that are a “Pair” can be Unpaired.

Select any 1 account of the 2 Paired Virtual Accounts, and then select the “Unpair” action present at the top right above the tables area.

This will Unpair the accounts and automatically mark each of them as “Need Pair”, also displaying them in the “Unpaired Virtual Accounts” area from the “Exceptions” tab.

1. Automatic “No Pair”

All Virtual Accounts that are of any other Utility than Electric, Natural Gas, or Lighting, no matter the “Type” (Distribution Only, Supply Only, Full Service), including Electric, Natural Gas and Lighting which are “Full Service” will be automatically marked as “No Pair” once 1st mapping or re-mapping to a Location occurs.

The “No Pair” label will be displayed on these accounts, in the “Virtual Accounts” area, marking the fact that these account don’t need a Pair.

2. Manual “No Pair”

A. Exceptions → Unpaired Virtual Accounts

For any cases where a Virtual Account marked as “Need Pair” needs to be a “No Pair”, select the account from the “Exceptions” → “Unpaired Virtual Accounts” area and select the “No Pair” action present at the top right above the tables. (example on next page)

Marking the account as “No Pair” states that no more information is expected to come in; the existing information is considered to be whole as it is.

The account marked as “No Pair” will no longer be displayed in the “Exceptions” → “Unpaired Virtual Accounts” area, and will appear with a “No Pair” label in the “Locations” → “Location Details” → “Virtual Accounts” area.

B. Locations → Location Details → Virtual Accounts

There exists a Virtual Account Custom Attribute named “Mark as “No Pair””.

Virtual Accounts that have the labels “Pair” and “Need Pair” have this attribute with a value set to “No” by default; Virtual Accounts that have the label “No Pair” have this attribute with a value set to “Yes” by default.

The attribute value can be easily changed for Virtual Accounts that have the “Pair” or “Need Pair” label, by going to the Virtual Accounts area, selecting the Edit (crayon icon) option for that account, and changing the “Mark as “No Pair”” attribute value from “No” to “Yes”. This will change the label for that Virtual Account to “No Pair”.

If 2 accounts are Paired, changing the attribute value to “Yes” for 1 of the 2 accounts will automatically break the Pair, marking one account as “No Pair” and the other one as “Need Pair”.

1. Re-mapping a Paired Account

If 2 accounts are Paired, re-mapping one of the accounts will automatically break the Pair.

The re-mapped account will no longer appear in the current Location, but instead be displayed in the new Location it was just mapped to. The automatic pairing process will determine if the account gets Paired with another account, gets a “Need Pair” label or a “No Pair” label.

The account that it was Paired with in the previous Location will get a “Need Pair” label.

2. Empty Account in Pair

If 1 Virtual Account of the 2 accounts that form a Pair ends up empty, with no bills in the Virtual Account, the Pair will automatically break, and the remaining account will be marked as “Need Pair”.

This happens due to the fact that UBM does not display empty Virtual Accounts.

3. Linked accounts part of a Pair

Linking of Virtual Accounts is not affected in any way by Pairing of 2 Virtual Accounts.

If multiple linked Virtual Accounts are part or a Pair, and the Parent Account is changed, the Pairing is kept and updated with the new Parent account.