We celebrate wins on this forum a lot. Let's talk about the times we came up empty. I audited a chain of 8 Wendy's franchises in Georgia and found... nothing. Every rate was correct, every meter was accurate, every tax was properly applied. Zero errors across 8 locations. My contingency fee: $0. My time investment: about 40 hours. It happens. Anyone else have a "clean bills" story?
The one that got away — learning from failures
I audited a hospital in Tulsa that I was sure would have errors — 12 meters, $80K/month in utility spend. Everything was correct. The facilities director told me they'd had an in-house energy manager review the bills annually for the past decade. First time I'd encountered a client with genuinely clean bills. Humbling.
Clean audits happen and they're part of the business. If you're finding errors on 100% of your audits, you're probably not auditing enough accounts. A healthy hit rate is 70-80%. The 20-30% where you find nothing are the cost of the contingency model — you invest the time upfront and sometimes it doesn't pay off. The key is that your wins more than compensate for your blanks. Greg's 40 hours on the Wendy's audit is the price of admission. His next audit might net $50,000.
I had a dry spell of three clean audits in a row once. Started questioning everything. Then the fourth one produced a $140K finding. It's a numbers game. Keep auditing.
Thanks everyone. Needed to hear that finding nothing is normal and not a failure. Back to prospecting.