Customer Billing

Video Tutorial

Billing

June 29, 2026

And before we get started, wanted to introduce our team.
Once again, I'm Derek Hibbs.
I started with Southern Star in 2007. And I've been in the building department my entire tenure.
Have also crossed some roles with measurement over the past few years.
Amanda Mudd is a senior analyst.
She has eight years of industry accounting experience.
Lisa Bryant, also a Senior Analyst.
16 years of industry accounting experience.
And both have been in billing for about 2 years.
Real quick, just kind of wanted to give some objectives for our training.
First of all, I'm just doing an overview of info.
We'll have some short summaries of topics like measurement and nominations.
Just to kind, of build a base of what goes into accounting and charges.
We will also get into some details that go into our charge calculations.
And we'll focus on charge types and all of the quantity and dollar amounts that are associated with your charges.
1 thing everybody knows me.
I'm a baseball guy.
Just 1 kind of use a.
An analogy is being a leadoff hitter.
We're kind of the lead off hitters for these trainings.
A lead-off fitter kind starts off the game taking a couple pitches just to help the hiters behind him pick up timing and learn.
And that's what we're wanting to do as the leaders here.
Want to know if this format is good?
Do you want more or less of anything?
And we want to hope the teams behind us, the other departments that will give you trainings in the future, know that this is the format that you guys want.
One thing though, lead-off hitters are also known for being fast.
I don't want this to be a really fast run through of everything.
Please use the available functions that you have to interact with us during the presentation.
After the presentations, please give us any feedback as well as ideas or preferences you may have.
Going through the list of customers that signed up for this, we have a diverse group that's signed.
We're covering a lot of topics that should be pertinent to most of the audience.
Afterwards, if you have follow up questions about specific topics, that are just for your needs, please reach out to us with anything you may need that
may be more specific to your need.
This will also be added to the training library that we're looking to input into CSI.
Stephanie Hathaway will be adding this along with other videos in the near future.
All right, for the agenda, as Sean stated, we've got a lot of items to cover.
There'll be some that we'll do just with a short basis.
Then we'd get into details more with the actual charges and invoices.
But we will cover nominations and measurement and how it leads into allocations and balancing.
We'll get in the charges, and have the invois is laid out.
Specific details for rate schedules and charge types.
A little bit into capacity release and some discount agreements.
And we get some details on imbalances and cash outs, PPAs, and then just potential with payments and ledger balances that we have once invoices are sent out.
And then how you can set yourself up as a contact in our system.
When we run through a lot of our data, when we're doing our closing processes, we had a sequence of information that run though to get to the final charge
at the end of the month.
And this, the sequence here will kind of go through some of those steps as far as how we get to those charges.
Real quick, I know everybody is familiar with nominations and they work with our scheduling group a lot.
Everyone knows the gas day is 9 AM to 9AM.
Shippers can use their contracts to nominate receipts and deliveries and everything is made at the location level.
And one thing with that too, we bill everything we build is at location levels as well.
For nomination cycles, you have your day ahead for timely and evening and then you also have the intraday for 1, 2, and 3. That final schedule quantity,
which is important for us is with that last total that you'll have on that ID3 cycle.
Also with measurement, all gas is measured by MCF at the meter and each meter is tied to a quality analysis stream.
Quality is measure by gas chromatograph.
We either have a spot sample with a gas chronograph or we have spot samples that is analyzed monthly in the lab.
The BTU for that, is applied to the MCS and then we calculate the decotherm.
Decotherms is the unit on which our contracts and charges for commodities are based.
Getting into allocations and our group is responsible for a lot of the allocators for the gas once it's been scheduled.
And we have the measurement volume come across to be able to assess charges at the location level.
Allocations are calculated based off that contractual schedule quantity.
That total is applied with measurement that we that is apply to that full location.
Daily allocated totals are used to calculate commodity charges for each contract.
Just like with everything, we charge everything on a daily basis.
For allocation methods, there's certain things that operators can do to help determine how they want allocations to be set.
We have a screen in CSI that's called a predetermined allocation screen that helps them calculate how the want gas to allocated to certain contracts at
their locations.
They can set allocation rank orders or set it on the percent basis, Each location in our system also has its own selected allocation method.
Once you look at the invoice, and Mandy will show you later, that allocation methods should be identified for every location that you have set up as a
receipt or delivery on your contract.
Certain methods we have include OBA swing and then what we call NOM allocation, which is used for a lot of logical points like pools.
Typically with those points, what you scheduled is what get allocated.
We also have some default locations like 1, 2, and 3 that have pro rata calculations based off whatever the setup for the operator has and then just how
much gas flows at those points.
For allocation totals, daily allocation total have gross and net.
We have the fuel, which is calculated on the gross total for transportation contracts.
The net total with that fuel reduction is the gas available at the location for that contract.
That's the gas that you'll have to be able to come on for your receipts.
One thing for allocations, everything for the previous day, the Gas Day is from nine to nine.
Allocations are usually done for that previous by about 11-15 of that following day.
So if you have some reports set up that like to go look at for information, typically the allocators are done by 11 15. And then we have balancing.
Balances always finish up right after the allocation process is run.
You can take a 1st, look at your updated daily commutative transport and storage balances.
Usually about 1130 of each day.
Transportation balances or net receipts versus gross deliveries.
Positive ones are due to Southern star and negative imbalances are do to you the shipper.
Storage balances always shows negative like we said with transport for the negative balance.
Anything with a negative balances gas that we owe to, you.
If your storage gets to 0, and you still owe us gas, a positive transport imbalance will be created.
So, you can't really have anything on a storage that gets below a 0 goes to a, positive number.
We will just automatically roll that into your transportation imbalance.
For monthly IAM and I.P.
balances, we do not calculate until we run final data closing the month.
Once we talk about imbalances and cash outs, you'll see some more of those processes there.
And for reports, 038 and 039 and CSI are great reports that are available for you, the shipper to view your balances throughout,
during the course of the month.
They're very good at letting you know what your balance was at the end of previous month, what you're beginning balance is,
if you have any PPAs or anything, and then showing you where your current standing is for the current month For invoices,
like I stated earlier, charges are calculated on a daily basis.
Your contractual and your agreement details are used to calculate daily reservation volumes and rates.
The allocation details that we have are use to calculated your commodity charges based on your contract per day.
And then the balancing details or used calculate anything you have on the storage contract.
and then potential cash out charges, based off of monthly imbalances.
Once we have calculated all those charges, we get into the invoice layout, which Mandy will take over and then show you how we,
uh, have that formatting on the, on, the.
The statements.
Hi, everyone, it's Mandy is Derek said we're going to talk a little bit about that and voice layout.
As you can see on page 1. Here we go.
The first page of the invoice will have the customer name and the billable party and information for the specific invoice,
such as the date that the invoices was created, the due date, and it'll list all the contracts along with the specifically amounts due for each contract.
And then at the bottom, you'll see your total invoice amount due.
It also lists the remittance information, for Southern Star, in the ways that we accept the payment.
The 2nd page of the invoice has some general information on the charge type acronyms, fuel percentages, the adjustment types,
et cetera.
You see at the very bottom the company contacts from Southern Star for customer service billing and scheduling will appear and those are specific to each customer.
So those might be a little bit different than what you see on this current screen.
The next section of invoice will get into the specific information for each contract.
As you can see, this is for an FTS contract.
It lists the charge quantities.
The rates and the amount to do for the applicable charge types, along with the total amount for that contract, and then following each of those pages,
the invoice will show the receipts and deliveries per contract that include the location, The gross and genetic allocations and any imbalance will at the
bottom as you see on this one there was an imbalance at end of the month.
After that, you'll see your storage contracts.
They have a similar summary page for contractual commodity and balance charges.
And again, it lists the quantities, the rates, and the amounts due for the charge types along with the total amount due,
for that contract.
And then following each of those pages, you'll see the daily balance page.
It'll show all injections and withdrawals and the balancing details per day.
And, then your commodity charges that you saw on the summary page should tie to the net injections, and with withdraws.
The REC charges are assessed to be ending balance of each day Next, we're going to talk just a little bit about rate schedules.
Every rate schedule is charged per By charge type per zone, so production or market.
There's a list here of the different rate schedules.
For Southern star, we have firm transport.
Transport and storage bundle, small customer transport, interruptible, firm storage, market based storage.
Interruptible storage and parking loan and then out beside those, you can see the charge types that are associated with each of those right schedules?
Our transportation charge types that you'll see on your invoice are separated into reservation and commodity.
Under the reservation, you will see reservation that's billed for firm transport reservation.
If you have capacity release, if you're a replacement or receiving shipper, You can see Reservation Assignment Credit.
Which is the credit for the capacity that is released to another contract.
Or you can see REV, which is capacity released volumetrically, RVA, Which is Reservation Volumetric Credit, and then the modernization charge MR1,
that are at max rate.
Under the commodity charges, you could see commodity, all chargeable deliveries, whether firm or interruptible, authorized overrun,
All deliveries over contractual capacity, again, assessed on a daily basis, MC1 for modernization on commodity, which is built on all max rate commodity ORA,
and then ACA, with their annual charge recovery.
And the storage charge types, again, separated to reservation and commodity.
You have reservation deliverability, the firm charge assessed to maximum daily withdrawal quantity.
The reservation delivery credit, Credit for released back to the original capacity holder.
The reservation capacity, which is daily ending balance capacity charge storage overrun assessed for daily, ending balances above the contract max storage quantity.
And also modernization.
Assessed to max rate red, and then in the commodity category, you'll see the injections, which is charge on daily injections into storage.
Withdrawals,which is on, daily withdrawals.
Injection overrun, it's charged on a daily, injections that are over the contractually allowed amount.
with draw over run, Which is over.
The allowed about for withdraws and again, modernization for commodity charges.
Now I'm going to turn it over to Lisa, and she's going get started talking about what you might see if you have capacity release.
Thanks, Mandy.
Thank you all for joining us this afternoon.
I am starting off with capacity-release.
Capacity-Release charges are allocated and charged just like they are for the original capacity holders.
The awarded capacity and rates are charged on the reservation volumes for each contract.
Then the Original Capacity Holders are credited the same charges based on details of the award.
Next, we have a discount agreements.
Discount agreements are a preset agreement to apply a reduced reservation rate for selected capacity on a firm contract.
If specific receipt and delivery locations are indicated for reservation discounts, they must be followed or max tariff rates will be applied for all the
volumes not following the terms of the discount agreement.
We also have capacity release from discounts.
All capacity released contracts from discounted contracts must follow the same points or we will charge the original contract holder max tariff rates.
Also currently MR1 would be applied.
The offer screen now gives the releaser the ability to select a discount indicator and that determines whether they, the release or the replacement contract
Holder is responsible to pay the difference between the discounted rate and the max tariff rate.
Moving on to transportation imbalances, transportation, im balances are tracked on an or contract, depending on whether they're in the market or the production zone.
Monthly activity and cumulative im, balances roll up to the or for each shipper.
The imbalance tracks the net receipts versus the gross deliveries.
Excess deliveries result in a positive imbalance and due to Southern Star.
Conversely, excess receipts over deliveries results in the negative imbalance due the shipper and that is similar to storage balances.
Next, I'm gonna talk a little bit about cash outs and how they're calculated.
Cash out charges, the first thing we do, we calculate a monthly tolerance level for each contract by taking the higher of a thousand decathermes or 5%
of gross deliveries.
Contracts are considered out of tolerance if they are imbalances over that level.
Imbalance contracts that are out tolerance in the same direction, either short or long for two consecutive months are cashed out in that second month.
Short imbalances are sold by Southern Star to the shipper and long imbalanced are purchased by southern star.
Rates are calculated based on Southern star spot price, either above spot for sales or below spot purchases.
Once invoices are sent out, data for that month is closed.
Should any volumes or rate need to be changed for a closed month, then PPAs are created to make those corrections in the current accounting period.
Also, per our tariff, any customer requested PAs can only go back six months.
Invoices are typically sent out on the fourth business day with the due date being 10 days from the invoice date.
Payments are made via check or wire transfer.
CSI only holds the data for each accounting date, whereas the ledger holds cumulative charges and payment balances.
The Treasury Department Southern Star will send out a statement if there is a balance remaining after the do date has passed.
And that statement will show the outstanding invoices as well as the cumulative balance.
I'm going to talk briefly about some contact types applicable to invoicing.
Customers can establish different contact, types invoice, primary invoice secondary, OBA primary, secondary and invoice view.
There can only be one invoice primary contact per customer, but there is no limit on invoice.
Secondary contacts.
Invoices are mailed or emailed to the invoice primary and the secondary contacts every month.
Contracts with invoice view, contacts, sorry, with Invoice View can log into CSI and view their invoice.
They just will not receive it electronically.
Each customer's security administrators are the only ones to make changes to any of these contact types.
If you have any additional questions regarding Contact types, you can contact our contract administrators, Julie Price or Drew Biddle.
Another option you have as a customer, You can name another party to act as an invoicing agent on your behalf.
The customer determines which role is performed by the agent.
the Agent can receive and view invosives, pay invoisives or monitor imbalances.
If there is an agent set up to pay the invoice, The invoice will be billed to the agent's customer account and then the.
Customer could receive a copy of it.

Printable Documents

Understanding Your Southern Star Invoice 32 pages · 1.68 MB PDF

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