🇺🇸United States

Delayed billing and revenue recognition from fragmented scheduling and accounting data

3 verified sources

Definition

Without a central data repository that connects pipeline/terminal schedules to accounting and marketing systems, there are delays in confirming actual movements, reconciling with nominations, and generating invoices. A major pipeline/terminal operator adopted a unified scheduling system specifically to standardize information management for accounting and marketing groups, improving reporting accuracy and profitability.[1][3]

Key Findings

  • Financial Impact: If scheduling integration improves profitability by 51% for a Fortune 500 operator and part of that is faster, more accurate billing and reduced disputes, a conservative estimate of 2–3 days reduction in average settlement on $1B of annual movements equates to financing and dispute‑related costs in the low single‑digit millions per year before optimization.
  • Frequency: Weekly
  • Root Cause: Siloed systems between operations (schedulers, SCADA) and back‑office (accounting, marketing) require manual reconciliation of scheduled versus actual movements and nominations, slowing invoice generation and dispute resolution.[1][3][6]

Why This Matters

This pain point represents a significant opportunity for B2B solutions targeting Oil and Coal Product Manufacturing.

Affected Stakeholders

Pipeline and terminal schedulers, Revenue accounting teams, Marketing and nominations analysts, Shipper services and contract administrators

Deep Analysis (Premium)

Financial Impact

$1.5M-$4M+ annually in close timeline delays and accrual restarts; working capital variance due to unclear transfer timing; audit fees from detailed testing • $1.5M-3M annually in financing costs and chargeback disputes on $300M-500M annual marine fuel sales • $1.5M–$2.5M annually from working capital inefficiency; suboptimal purchasing

Unlock to reveal

Current Workarounds

Accountant manually consolidates shipping schedules, delivery confirmations, and invoices; creates GL entries from email chain • Accountant manually matches scheduled volumes to delivery confirmations to invoices in separate spreadsheets • Accountant manually matches scheduling data to delivery tickets to invoices during peak season

Unlock to reveal

Get Solutions for This Problem

Full report with actionable solutions

$99$39
  • Solutions for this specific pain
  • Solutions for all 15 industry pains
  • Where to find first clients
  • Pricing & launch costs
Get Solutions Report

Methodology & Sources

Data collected via OSINT from regulatory filings, industry audits, and verified case studies.

Evidence Sources:

Related Business Risks

Sub‑optimal pipeline and terminal schedules causing lost throughput and revenue

If scheduling optimization improves operational and planning efficiency by 41% and profitability by 51% for a Fortune 500 pipeline/terminal operator, even a conservative 5–10% under‑throughput on a 500,000 bbl/day network at $2/bbl margin equates to roughly $18–36M per year in lost contribution margin before optimization.

Excess pumping energy, drag‑reducing agent, and operating costs from inefficient schedules

Emerson reports that using PipelineOptimizer to reduce electric and DRA usage can "easily" save a pipeline operator substantial operating costs; on a 1,000‑mile liquids line, energy/DRA typically run into tens of millions of dollars annually, so a conservative 5–10% avoidable waste implies roughly $2–5M per year attributable to poor scheduling.[3][4]

Product contamination and interface reprocessing due to poor batch sequencing

Scheduling research for real‑world pipelines models interface contamination and reprocessing as a significant cost term; for a large refined‑products line, even 0.5–1% of shipped volume downgraded or re‑processed at $50/bbl value loss on 200,000 bbl/day implies roughly $18–36M per year of avoidable quality‑related costs if sequencing is not optimized.[4][6]

Idle pipeline and tank capacity from manual, non‑optimal scheduling

If operational efficiency increases by 41% after implementing optimized scheduling for a large pipeline/terminal network, even attributing only a fraction of that to added throughput suggests multi‑million‑dollar annual value; for a 300,000 bbl/day line, 3–5% avoidable idle capacity at $1.50/bbl tariff is roughly $5–8M per year in lost capacity monetization.

Regulatory non‑compliance exposure from inadequate scheduling visibility and reconciliation

Regulatory penalties for misreported volumes, tax irregularities, or imbalance violations can range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars per incident; recurring reconciliation deficiencies in a large midstream operator could plausibly expose them to multi‑million‑dollar risk over several years, though precise figures are case‑specific.

Opportunistic misallocations and unauthorized usage enabled by opaque scheduling and tracking

In large multiproduct systems moving millions of barrels per month, even 0.1% undetected diversion or misallocation at $70/bbl could imply several million dollars per year in potential exposure; weak scheduling controls increase the difficulty of detecting such discrepancies, although concrete public fraud cases tied purely to scheduling are limited.

Request Deep Analysis

🇺🇸 Be first to access this market's intelligence