Strengthen access to and functionality of the commercial systems. Experience has shown the importance of making regular checks of personnel that have access to the company’s business and billing systems, as well as performing analysis of the data stored in the Customer Management System (CMS). Access to the billing systems and database of customers should be limited as much as possible within the utility, which should carryout regular audits and verification of who has access to what part of the billing system. Utilities have also to ensure their billing systems and collection mechanisms are properly functioning and the rate of overdue bills are within reasonable limits of the account receivables. Whenever possible integrating their CMS with the Network Information System (NIS) so that customers can be automatically associated with a transformer, meter, and location. The commercial systems should also reflect in transparent manner the support mechanism introduced to socially disadvantageous groups, and this is described next in the social participation practices

Segmentation of the losses among the residential, industrial, and commercial customers is an important activity to be performed early on as part of the study. This is because losses in the industrial and commercial customers are usually concentrated in few customers with high volume, compared to the residential section which is large number of customers with small volume.