If you told us your finance team just spent three hours manually reconciling Guarantee of Origin (GO) transfers from last month's trades, we’d probably ask “was that all it took?” - Seriously, we’ve heard a LOT worse.
Under the EU Renewable Energy Directive, renewable energy producers are not explicitly required to maintain detailed records of GO transfers, because the registries do this for you. However, when you realize that there are 30+ AIB GO Registries in Europe (and a handful that are not AIB-hub connected, including Poland, the U.K, Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus, amongst others), you realize that the burden IS on the producer to keep everything in order, even if not explicitly. That’s because the directive simply doesn't address the administrative nightmare this creates for energy finance departments. Every GO transfer triggers multiple invoicing requirements across different contract types, jurisdictions, and payment schedules. With such a high degree of fragmentation, manual processes practically guarantee errors at some point in the future.
Let’s break down simply why integrated tooling for your finances within renewable energy procurement and production (such as GOs) is important:
- Invoice Management. This may sound obvious, but just for good measure: Invoices are a default requirement in most countries for accurate business records and bookkeeping. They allow businesses to keep track of their financial activities and engagements, meaning they can accurately report their financial standing and tax requirements to the respective authority in their region. Without the ability to instantly extract and document invoices, you’re either racking up a bigger account bill, or accumulating manual-workload debt that eats into time better spent handling high-priority business operations, subsequently expanding your business.
- Delivery & Contract Terms: Transfers of GOs (the European standard EAC) and corresponding monetary transfers are not automatically recorded in the same database. If you’re not keeping track of your GO transfers, you cannot automatically connect your monetary transactions to their associated GO transactions. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, so long as you are prepared for manual work - but automating and connecting receipts isn’t a quick task.
In both cases, you’re likely looking at data retrieval across the large, fragmented GO registry network, and trying to corroborate findings within your bank statements. Depending on the number of registries you’re accessing, and your familiarity with their user interface, this can take an exceptionally long amount of time. We fixed that.
Soldera is integrated across Europe, and operates as a registry of registries, consolidating all of the transaction history into one place, with export functionality included. And, if you’ve received proceeds from aggregation of either spot or forward sales, you’ll be able to access your transaction details in the same way, too. That’s because within 5 days of receiving payment from the buyer (after one of our tenders), we're contractually obligated to notify you, the producer, of the specific transaction details by email. This email will include your portion of the proceeds after deducting our fee and transaction costs (most commonly registry export fees). For privacy purposes, we shield the buyer information just as we shield your information when we coordinate the transaction, ensuring a totally secure sales channel.
You can then request your payout with one click through the Soldera Platform. Invoicing is the easy part, and if don't wish to issue an invoice immediately, you may do so later at any time. This means rather than drafting or uploading your own invoice, you can simply click a button to initiate the invoicing process. You can also input a reference number and a VAT number.
Soldera always transfers the payment to your account within 7 days of receiving your invoice. Think of it this way - issue the invoice whenever you find the sum interesting. You don’t have to worry about it, because the money is not going anywhere.
Soldera's automated invoice and transaction features within the Soldera platform is serving the admin needs of 3,000 renewable energy production sites across Europe. The platform's AI-powered back office automation eliminates manual reconciliation altogether, whilst also ensuring complete alignment with your contracts. If you feel like getting un-stuck from spreadsheets, consider signing up to Soldera.
