Trusted by leading brands
We verify every charge on your electricity, water and rates bills against the published tariff, and manage your account month to month so errors do not come back.
Start your free account reviewElectricity Water Property Rates
Trusted by leading brands
Platform statistics
1929
Billing Errors Found
18%
Average Client Savings
7158+
Account Reviews Completed
Here is what is happening on commercial utility accounts in South Africa right now. Not because the system is broken. Because nobody is checking.
Municipalities estimate instead of sending someone out. Some accounts run on estimates for months. A few run for years. When an actual read finally happens, a large unexplained adjustment lands on the bill, gets approved by finance, and is paid.
Metering companies and municipalities apply rates without cross-checking the published schedule. Additional fees appear on invoices with no clear explanation. They get paid because they are on the bill.
If you were sold a consumption dashboard, you know what your usage is. You still do not know whether you were billed correctly. Those are two completely different problems.
OptiRate is the system that finds these errors and reduces your costs over time. Across every account. Every month. Something that simply cannot be done manually at scale.
We review your accounts. Every bill, every cycle, every supplier.
When we find a savings opportunity, we tell you the amount and when it kicks in.
When we find a billing error, we tell you what it is and what it is worth.
Then we fix it, recover what you are owed, and keep watching so it does not come back.
Most clients get both.
Knowing your consumption is one thing. Reducing your costs is another. Watching a graph go up and down does not, on its own, take a single rand off your account. The key cost drivers behind that bill have to be actively managed.
Charts, trends, and benchmarks. Useful for visibility. The bill still arrives at the end of the month, and nobody has acted on the cost drivers behind it.
We do not stop at reporting. We work the cost drivers that actually move your utility spend, and we keep working them every cycle so the savings stick.
Plain truth
A dashboard measures. We manage the key cost drivers that reduce the bill.
Those are two different jobs. Measurement, on its own, does not lower your costs. Active management of the cost drivers does, and that is what we run on your behalf.
We start with a full review of your accounts. No cost, no commitment.
If we find savings, we implement them and stay on the account.
If we find errors, we dispute them on your behalf and follow through until the correction reflects.
Our fee is tied to results. If we find nothing, you pay nothing.
It is a simple arrangement. It works because we only get paid when you do.
There is no one starting point. Some businesses have never checked a bill. Others have a once-off report sitting in a folder. Others already measure usage but have never recovered a single error. OptiRate slots in wherever you are.
Bills get paid because they arrive. Finance approves them. Nobody on your team has the time, the data, or the tariff knowledge to challenge a single line. The errors are still there. They are just invisible to you.
Someone produced a report. It identified problems. The savings either never materialised, or they came back six months later. A report is not a recovery. A recovery requires someone on the account, every month, holding the supplier to it.
You have a dashboard. You know what you used. You still do not know whether you were charged correctly. Measurement is the wrong tool for that job. Our verification engine sits alongside whatever you already run.
Wherever you start, the cost of finding out is the same: nothing.
We specialise in portfolios where the bills are too many to check by hand: multiple sites, multiple suppliers, multiple meter types. The more bills you receive, the bigger the gap between what is billed and what is actually owed.
Retail chains
Tens to hundreds of stores
Schools & campuses
Private and independent
Healthcare & pharmacy groups
Clinics, dispensaries, hospitals
Restaurant & fast-food groups
QSR, franchise networks, dine-in chains
Hospitality & leisure
Hotels, lodges, gyms, car washes
Body corporates & property funds
Bulk-meter recovery, tenant billing
5 → 500+
Sites per client
All SA municipalities
Plus Eskom Direct accounts
3 utilities
Electricity, water, property rates
Whether you pay your municipality directly or through a landlord, OptiRate covers both.
You receive the municipal or Eskom bill directly. We audit every charge against the published tariff and the meter data.
Your landlord bills you based on a sub-meter reading. We verify the meter report, the common area allocation, and the invoice.
Most businesses either ignore their utility bills entirely, or pay for a one-off report that sits in a folder and changes nothing.
OptiRate is neither of those things.
We manage your accounts on an ongoing basis, dispute and recover on your behalf, and stay on the account until errors are corrected. Then we keep watching so they do not come back.
Yes. We cover Eskom and every municipal supplier in South Africa, including the metros (City of Johannesburg, City of Cape Town, eThekwini, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Nelson Mandela Bay, Mangaung, Buffalo City) and local / district municipalities.
Yes. We do not just produce a report. We draft the dispute, submit it to the supplier on your behalf, and follow it through until the correction reflects on your account.
Highly variable. Private-sector suppliers usually resolve within 3 to 6 months. Municipal recoveries typically take 6 to 12 months. Sometimes longer for complex backdated claims spanning multiple tariff cycles.
Multi-site operators: retail chains, schools and campuses, healthcare and pharmacy groups, restaurant and fast-food groups, hospitality and leisure operators (hotels, lodges, gyms, car washes), body corporates and property portfolios. The more sites and the more suppliers, the bigger the error surface and the bigger the recovery.
Electricity, water and sewage, and property rates across all South African municipalities and Eskom.
The initial review is free. If we find savings, our fee is tied to results. If we find nothing, you pay nothing. Speak to us about the specifics for your account.
No. OptiRate sits alongside your existing AP and finance systems. You keep paying your supplier the way you always have; we audit, dispute, and recover in parallel.
A wide range. Errors originate at the municipality, the metering company, and in some cases at the landlord recharge layer. Most clients are surprised by what we find on accounts they considered straightforward.
Yes. For retail and mall tenants we verify the sub-meter reading, check common area allocations against the lease, and reconcile the landlord's utility invoice line by line against what was measured. We act for the tenant, not the landlord.
Yes. OptiRate is independent of Eskom, municipalities, metering companies, and landlords. We act entirely for the bill-payer.
I built OptiRate because managing utility costs for multi-site businesses cannot be done manually. There are too many bills, too many suppliers, and too many places for errors to hide.
OptiRate is a system. It finds errors systematically, tracks every saving from identification to recovery, and keeps accounts under review month to month.
After ten years of auditing utility bills across South Africa, I can tell you that most businesses are overpaying. Not by a small amount. And not because the system is broken.
Because nobody is checking.
Start here and find out exactly where your money is going.
We cover direct municipal accounts and landlord utility accounts. The initial review is free.
Start hereElectricity Water Property Rates Ongoing Management
Not ready to book?
Get an instant estimate. No registration required.
Start Free Analysis