Been reflecting on efficiency lately. What activities eat up the most time in your audits without adding much value? For me it's definitely chasing down utility reps who don't return calls and reformatting data that comes in inconsistent formats. Curious what others identify as their biggest time sinks.
Biggest time wasters in audit process
My biggest time waster is probably over-analyzing accounts where there clearly aren't any significant errors. Sometimes I spend 8 hours trying to find something that isn't there instead of moving on to more promising accounts. Learning to recognize "clean" accounts faster would save a lot of time.
Great thread Howard. For me it's definitely manual data entry from utility reports. I've started asking utilities for Excel files instead of PDFs whenever possible. Even if they charge a small fee for electronic format, it saves enough time to be worth it. OCR software helps but still requires cleanup.
Waiting for utility responses is huge. I've started working multiple audits simultaneously so I'm not sitting idle while waiting for one utility to respond. Also learned to set specific deadlines in my requests - "please respond by [date]" gets faster responses than open-ended requests.
Redoing work because I didn't understand the tariff correctly the first time. Now I spend more time upfront really studying the rate schedule and calling utility reps to clarify ambiguous language. Better to invest 2 hours in tariff research than waste 6 hours on wrong calculations.
Client hand-holding during the process. Some clients want daily updates and explanations of every minor finding. I've started doing formal status calls every 2 weeks instead of ad-hoc communication. Keeps them informed but protects my work time.
Howard - totally agree on utility communication. Also spend way too much time trying to decipher poorly scanned bill copies where half the numbers are unreadable. Started requiring digital files or clear originals upfront. Saves hours of squinting at documents and guessing at values.