In most utilities one person spends the last week of every month or quarter assembling the same report by hand out of several systems.
How one report gets assembled
Pick one report. A state submittal, a council packet, a grant draw request, a monthly operating report, an annual water loss audit. We trace every figure in it to the record it comes from, build the assembly once, and hand you something that produces the report on a schedule.
Tracing takes longer than building, and it is what survives the engagement: a figure whose source is written down can be produced again by somebody else. Tracing also turns up cases where two figures in the same report have been derived from the same underlying number by two different methods, for years, because nobody had cause to look.
What arrives
The report, produced. The assembly, documented, with each figure tied to its source system and field. A list of the places where the source data cannot actually support the figure the form asks for. That is a compliance finding, and it is better in writing before an auditor produces it.
| Figure the form asks for | Value | Sheet and cell | How it was derived |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost of apparent losses | $329,631 | 2024 · CD49 | As filed |
| Cost of real losses | $1,386,515 | 2024 · CH49 | As filed |
| Recoverable annually | $1.7M | — | Apparent + real, both as computed in the filed audit |
| Apparent loss volume | 46.4 MG | 2024 · BL49 | Converted to million gallons from the unit the filing states |
| Share of apparent loss defaulted | 55.5% | 2024 · BL49 | Defaulted components ÷ total apparent loss |
| Non-revenue water | 27.6% | — | From the filed component volumes |
Abilene, FY2024. The workbook is checksummed SHA-256 7270fa7072e5… and was retrieved 2026-08-11.
Every figure above is published on this site and read out of data/archive/twdb/2026-08-11-7270fa7072e5.xlsx. Nothing here is invented, and no engagement is implied.
The trace above is the deliverable. Each figure names the sheet and the cell it was read out of, so somebody who was not there can produce it again.
Where this stops
Certifying the submittal is not something we can do for you. A regulatory filing is signed by the utility, by somebody with the authority to sign it, and assembling the figures does not transfer that. What we hand over is the arithmetic and the trail behind it, in the state an auditor would want to find it in.
Everything is read. Nothing is written back into your systems. An assembly that could change a billing record would have to be governed like a billing system, and this work does not need that access.
Where a form asks for a quantity your records cannot answer, that is the finding, and it goes in writing with the reason. Filling it with a plausible number is how a report becomes wrong in a way nobody can trace afterwards.
Who this is for
Best fit: a report on a fixed deadline, assembled by hand from more than one system, where you can name the person who assembles it and the week it costs them.
Also a fit ahead of an audit or a rate case, when the question of where each published figure came from is about to be asked by somebody else.
Poor fit: a report whose shape changes every cycle. If the columns are negotiated each time, there is no assembly to build, and we will say so before you pay for one.
The fee
The work is bounded by one report, so the scope is visible before it is quoted. The fee is set by how many systems the figures come out of and what state the records are in. It needs no capital budget and does not touch a system of record.