What a months-by-accounts utility tracker looks like
A months-by-accounts utility tracker is an Excel sheet with one row for each billing month and one column for each utility account or location. Each bill fills exactly one cell: the amount goes where that bill's month meets that bill's account. A total column adds up each month, and a total row adds up each account.
Here is a small one, with the cell a new bill would fill highlighted:
| Month | Electric, shop (acct 4410) | Electric, warehouse (acct 7826) | Electric, office (acct 2051) | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 2026 | $612.40 | $1,048.15 | $312.18 | $1,972.73 |
| Aug 2026 | $655.02 | $1,102.87 | $298.40 | $2,056.29 |
| Sep 2026 | $598.73 | $987.30 (new bill) | $305.66 | $1,891.69 |
People keep this layout because it answers the questions a business actually asks about utilities: what did each location cost this month, and is any account creeping up? It also makes a missing bill obvious. An empty cell means a bill has not been entered yet.
Why it's worth keeping the tracker current
Utility bills are small enough to put off and large enough to matter. Three published figures put a size on them:
You can only see savings like that if you can compare one month with the last, account by account. That is the whole job of the tracker. The risk is in how the numbers get there. Raymond Panko's compilation of nine field audits found errors in 84% of 163 operational spreadsheets,. A bill typed into the wrong month, or into the shop's column instead of the warehouse's, looks perfectly normal until someone goes looking.
The volume adds up too. Three accounts billed monthly is 36 amounts a year to read, type and check, each one placed by hand at a row and column intersection.
Four ways to get utility bills into Excel, compared
Here's how the realistic options differ. The big question is whether the tool writes into the tracker you keep or hands you a new file.
| Approach | Where the data lands | Picks the right account column? | Adds a new month row? | Preview before write? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Type each bill by hand | Your tracker | You do | You do, and you extend the totals | You are the preview |
| 2. Bill-to-Excel converters (upload a bill, download a spreadsheet) | A new sheet or CSV you copy from | No. You copy each amount across | No | No. The copy step is where mistakes slip in |
| 3. ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager | EPA's free online tool, outside your books | You enter or upload each meter's data | Not applicable | Not applicable |
| 4. Automation that writes into your tracker (General Invoices) | The right cell of your own file | Yes, by the account number printed on the bill | Yes, in month order, with totals extended | Yes: cell-level preview, backup, then an approved write |
Bottom line: converters save the reading and keep the copying. Portfolio Manager is the right place to benchmark a building's energy use, and it sits beside your books rather than in them. If the tracker in Excel is where you want the numbers, option 4 is the only one that fills it for you. Our comparison with invoice-to-Excel tools covers option 2 in more detail, including where those tools are the better fit.
Where General Invoices is not the right choice. It records the dollar amount for each bill. It does not track kilowatt-hours, compare rates or audit a bill for errors. It works with Excel .xlsx and .xlsm files on a Mac, not Google Sheets. It isn't released yet, and at launch bills go in by drag and drop. Email forwarding is planned for later.
How to enter utility bills with General Invoices, in five steps
General Invoices isn't released yet; these are the steps once it launches. The general setup, from install to your first approved entry, is in our guide to automating invoice entry in Excel. Here's what is different for a utility tracker.
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Open your tracker and confirm the accounts
Open the workbook you already keep. The app recognises the months-by-accounts grid and lists which account number belongs to which column: "account 7826 is the warehouse column." Correct anything it got wrong, then confirm. Only that utility's bills go to this sheet. A tracker that mixes providers, say electric and internet, needs one sheet per provider.
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Drag in the bill
Drop in the bill as a PDF or a photo, up to 30 pages and 10 MB per document. A month's worth of bills can go in at once.
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Let it read the account number and current charges
The app reads the account number exactly as printed, the bill date, and the current charges. If the bill also carries a past balance, it keeps the current charges separate from the total due, so last month's amount is not counted twice.
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Check where it will go
The amount goes in that account's column, on the row for the month of the bill date. A tracker normally stops at the last month you entered, so the new month often has no row yet. The app adds one in month order, labels it the way your other months are labelled ("Oct 2026" or "October"), fills the row's total formula down, and extends the column totals to include it.
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Approve
You see the exact cells that will change. Approve, and the app backs up the workbook, writes to a copy, verifies it, and swaps it into place. Refuse, and nothing changes. The security page shows each step of that sequence.
When General Invoices refuses a utility bill
A financial grid is a bad place to guess. When a bill does not fit, the app stops and says why in plain words. These are the cases:
- No account number on the bill. If it can't read one, the bill stops with a message saying so, and nothing is written.
- An account the tracker doesn't have. The message lists the accounts it knows. Add a column for the new account and map it, and the bill files normally.
- The cell is already filled. A number in that month and account means the bill was already entered, so the app refuses rather than overwrite it. This is how it stops a bill being entered twice.
- Month labels it can't read. If none of the row labels read as months, it asks you to add the row yourself.
- Which year? In a tracker whose month labels include the year, a February 2026 bill goes to the February 2026 row, never February 2025. If your labels carry no year, start a new sheet each year so "Feb" is never ambiguous.
- One column per expense category. A sheet laid out by category, with no column per account, is refused, because placing a bill there would mean guessing the category.
Questions people ask about utility bills in Excel
Can Excel enter utility bills automatically on its own?
No. Excel adds up the tracker, and Power Query in Excel 365 can pull tables out of some PDFs, but neither one knows which number is the account and which is the current charge. Someone or something still has to read each bill and put the amount in the right month and column. That is the step a tool like General Invoices does for you, after you approve a preview.
What happens when a bill shows a past-due balance?
General Invoices records the current charges for that bill and keeps the larger total due separate, so the same money is not counted twice when last month's bill is already in your tracker. The review shows the current charges, and the prior balance and total due when the bill prints them.
I have three electric accounts with the same utility. Will the bills get mixed up?
Each account number maps to its own column, and the app files each bill by the account number printed on it. A bill for an account that is not mapped is refused with a message listing the accounts it knows, so it never lands in a neighbouring column.
Does it work with a utility tracker template I downloaded?
Yes, if the template has one row per month and one column per account, or one sheet per month. Those are the layouts General Invoices has been tested on. A sheet with one column per expense category is refused, because the app cannot tell which category a bill belongs to without guessing.
Keep your tracker. Stop retyping the bills.
General Invoices isn't released yet. Join the waitlist and we'll email you when it launches.
Sources
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electricity Sales, Revenue, and Average Price, Table 5.b "Commercial Average Monthly Bill", data year 2024, released October 7, 2025: U.S. total of 19,480,886 commercial customers and an average monthly bill of $791.56. EIA has since discontinued this table; the underlying data is in the EIA-861 files.
- ENERGY STAR (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), ENERGY STAR for small business, read October 14, 2026: "an average commercial building" can save up to 30 percent on energy bills.
- Raymond R. Panko, University of Hawaii, Audits of Operational Spreadsheets: nine field audits covering 163 operational spreadsheets, errors found in 84% (weighted average).
- General Invoices product status, verified September 23, 2026: months-by-accounts utility grids are routed by the account number printed on the bill; a new month row is added in the grid's own label style and every total widens to cover it.