What is a cost evidence pack? 

These packs of documents contain breakdowns of all the service elements included in your annual service charge statements. They provide proof that the cost was incurred by Hyde, and the invoices paid.

The pack will contain:

  • A copy of your service charge statement
  • A breakdown detailing each transaction that has been included in your service charge statement for each service
  • Copies of the evidence for each transaction for each service

The cost evidence pack contains the invoice or works order to support the costs in your service charge statement. It won’t provide information on the quality of the work undertaken.

Do you need one? What do you want to find out?

We provide many cost evidence packs each year. Customers have told us that they often don’t show what the customer was hoping for.

In most cases, a detailed breakdown will give you more information than the invoices contained in the cost evidence pack. You can request a detailed breakdown too.

For more information, it’s better to get in touch with us through MyAccount. Your service charge officer is happy to provide whatever information you need, to answer all your questions.

How will I receive the pack?

Once your pack is compiled, you may be offered an appointment to view the invoices at one of our offices, or we may send documents directly to you. If you’d like copies to be sent to you, whether that’s electronic or paper, we reserve the right to charge an administration fee:

  • Up to 100 invoices - £50.00
  • Over 100 invoices - £80.00

What information should I see?

The information below details the format of the information, what’s included and how this links back to the statement you were originally sent.

The statement

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This is a copy of the statement that we originally sent to you. Below is an extract from an example statement which details:

The breakdown

The breakdown of costs gives information for each of the services listed on your statement. This includes each transaction that adds up to the total amount for the year. You’ll note from the example below that the total amount for all of the transactions equals the total actual cost details on the statement above:

Estate Services

Reference

Description

Cost

CCTV Maintenance

ICU01 – BDI Services

Half-yearly servicing of all cameras and related electronics

£594.00

CCTV Maintenance

ICU01 – BDI Services

Half-yearly servicing of all cameras and related electronics

£594.00

 

 

 

£1,188.00

The total actual cost on this example statement is £1,188.00. This is the total of the transactions shown on the breakdown.

The cost evidence

For each of the transactions detailed on the breakdown, there’s cost evidence included within the relevant section of the pack.

For this example, you would look in the CCTV maintenance cost section in the pack (check the contents page) and you’d be able to see each of the invoices and corresponding cost for your individual block:

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  • What are bulk invoices?

    In the pack, you may find invoices that cover a whole region and not just your block.

    We have framework contracts in place with some suppliers, for certain services, like responsive repairs. These contracts cover wide areas and we receive bulk invoices from our contractors. It also helps towards being able to fix things quicker, and respond to our customers’ needs.

    Because we manage thousands of homes, using bulk invoices makes the payment process much easier and more efficient.

    These bulk invoices cover whole regions, and many different individual items of works or service. With every invoice, we’re also given a breakdown of each individual item of work undertaken by that supplier. Suppliers provide supporting documents like works orders, confirming which estates, blocks or properties received each service. We make sure the supplier does a good job, and then work out what work was been done for each customer, so we can calculate the service charge.

    You’ll only ever pay for the work that is undertaken to your block or estate as part of the bulk invoice. Not the whole bulk invoice.

    We provide copies of the bulk invoice in this pack, because this is how we have paid for the work to your block or estate. This invoice will always be accompanied by a table detailing how much of the bulk invoice is attributable to your block or estate.

  • Why is there a works order instead of an invoice?

    You may notice “works orders” included within the pack. Under relevant legislation we’re required to provide supporting evidence for our costs. This doesn’t always have to be an invoice. If we don’t have an invoice, a works order is provided as an acceptable alternative. The works order will provide all of the relevant detail to support the costs you have been charged (i.e. description of works, total cost or works, etc).

     

  • Why have old invoices been added to this statement?

    The date an invoice is paid determines which financial year the invoice is included in and which service charge statement we’ll seek to recover the costs. For example, if we receive one in February 2022, but it is not paid until May 2022, it will be included in the service charge statement for the financial year 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023 (when the invoice was paid) rather than the financial year 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022 which is when the invoice was issued.

    Although some invoices are paid shortly after being received, some do take longer to be paid. This could be for a number of reasons, like if the work is challenged by our team.

Get in touch

If you have any questions for our Service Charge experts, log into MyAccount or give us a call. There’s always an influx in queries around the time of the statements, and we answer them in the order that we receive them. Thank you for your patience.