Clearbook™: evidence on your book without handing over your customers
What Clearbook is
When we started buying energy businesses, the hardest part was not agreeing a price. It was proving what a contract book was actually worth without asking a seller to hand over their entire customer base to a competitor before any money had changed hands. There was no tool that did that, so we built one.
Clearbook connects directly to the industry data sources (EES/ECOES, GES/Xoserve, Electralink and the DCC) and checks each meter point for itself. You upload your data into the platform. Clearbook does the analysis. Our deal team receives a summary report about the book as a whole, and you receive the same report at the same time. We also run it across our own portfolio every month, which is why we are willing to price against it.
Meter numbers. That is the whole of it.
To verify a book, Clearbook needs the MPAN or MPRN for each supply, the supplier and the contract dates. It does not need your customers' names, addresses, contacts, phone numbers or email addresses, and we do not ask for them at any point in due diligence. A meter number on its own does not tell anybody who to ring.
- MPAN and MPRN meter point numbers
- Date signed, start date and end date
- Contracted consumption and uplift
- Payment terms and payments received to date
- Registered supplier and registration dates
- Customer or company names
- Site contacts and decision makers
- Phone numbers and email addresses
- Your CRM, pipeline or quote history
- Individual signed contract documents
You upload the data into Clearbook. Clearbook gives us the summary. The integrity and security of each individual contract stays intact, and the raw detail is never distributed around a deal team by email.
What you upload, and how little work it is
Clearbook works from redacted contract information for the supplies you have placed: the meter point the contract sits on, the date it was signed, its start and end dates, the contracted consumption, your uplift, the payment terms and any payments already received. Names and contact details are stripped out before anything reaches us.
You do not have to type any of it. Clearbook imports it automatically from your supplier commission statements using AI. Drop the statements in as they arrive from the supplier and the platform reads them, matches each line to a meter point and builds the book for you. It then does all of the calculations: commission earned to date, commission still to come, what has been paid against what is owed, and where the gaps are.
It is quick. Each supplier takes under two minutes to upload, and most sellers have everything Clearbook needs within about thirty minutes. Before anything is imported for analysis, Clearbook strips out everything it does not need, so customer identifiable data is never saved in the first place.
Within an hour of the last upload the full report is ready, covering the numbers, the recommendations and the areas of actionable insight, which are yours to keep whether a deal proceeds or not. Weeks of due diligence turned into an afternoon, with something genuinely useful at the end of it.
- Under two minutes per supplier to upload, around thirty minutes in total for most sellers
- Customer identifiable data is stripped out before import, so it is never saved
- Upload supplier commission statements as they are, in the formats your suppliers send them
- AI reads each line and matches it to the right meter point and contract
- Signed date, start and end dates, contracted consumption, uplift and payment terms are captured for every supply
- Payments received are reconciled against what should have been paid
- Full report within the hour, with recommendations and actionable insight that are yours to keep either way
What Clearbook can show
Whether a supply is genuinely live
Every meter point is checked against the industry record, so we can see which contracts are actually in supply, with which supplier, and from when.
Contract end dates and renewal windows
Registered start and end dates straight from the industry data, rather than whatever was typed into a CRM three years ago.
Consumption against forecast
Actual metered volume compared with the volume the contract was written on, which is what really drives commission earned to date.
Commission still to come
An evidenced end-of-contract value for the book as a whole, rather than an estimate that has to be discounted for uncertainty.
Commission you have not been paid
Where actual volume has run ahead of forecast, or a supplier has under-paid, it shows up. That money is yours, not ours.
Concentration and health of the book
How much of the value sits with a handful of supplies or one supplier, and how the book is ageing overall.
Stage two: payment behaviour and contract health
On its own, stage one will not always tell you whether customers are actually paying their bills, or whether a contract is sitting behind a complaint or a dispute. That picture only becomes available if both buyer and seller consent to progress to stage two.
With that consent, Clearbook can access supplier portals, download invoices and check the payment status of each contract. Where portal access is not available, it automatically produces a concise query request for each supplier asking about the status of the relevant contracts, then imports their responses straight back in. Both routes feed the same thing: an overall health score for the book.
- Only runs with the consent of both buyer and seller
- Supplier portal access to download invoices and check payment status contract by contract
- Automatic, concise query requests to suppliers where portal access is not possible
- Supplier responses imported back into Clearbook without manual re-keying
- Bad debt, disputes and complaints reflected in an overall book health score
A tool for the conversation, not a verdict
Clearbook assesses the health of a broker's book and that broker's position with its suppliers. It is not a decision making tool in its own right, and we do not treat its output as one. It is used to prompt a discussion: what risks might exist, what they are actually worth, and what could be done to mitigate them. The judgement stays with people on both sides of the table.
It also works in your favour more often than sellers expect. Clearbook frequently reveals commission that suppliers have underpaid to the TPI. That is actionable intelligence, it can be acted on immediately, and the money is yours, paid to you before completion or reflected in the price, whether or not a deal goes ahead.
Contract due diligence used to be the longest, most laborious and riskiest part of a brokerage sale, especially when only a sample was analysed and the rest was discounted for uncertainty.
With Clearbook it is now typically the quickest part of the whole process. These days it is the legal and wider financial workstreams that take the longer time.
What it cannot show, and will not ask for
Things Clearbook never sees
- Who your customers are. Clearbook works from meter point numbers, not names, and we do not ask for a customer list with contact details.
- Your customers' contact details, decision makers, phone numbers or email addresses. They are not needed and we do not want them.
- Line-by-line contract terms. We receive a summary report, not a copy of each individual contract and its commercials.
- Anything about pricing conversations, quotes in progress or your pipeline. Clearbook reads the industry record, not your CRM.
- Forward market movement. It evidences the book as it exists today; nobody can evidence what wholesale prices will do next.
- The quality of a customer relationship. Whether a customer renews with you again is judgement, not data, and we treat it as such.
Where it needs human help
Very recent switches can take days to appear in the national data. Anything on the edge is flagged as unconfirmed rather than counted.
Some smaller suppliers publish less detail, so a small part of a book may still need a manual check against your statements.
Clearbook produces the evidence. The offer still involves judgement about your people, your systems and your customer relationships.
Electricity and gas are covered comprehensively. Water and non-standard supply types are verified the traditional way.
The advantages, plainly
- Every contract is checked, not a 10% sample, so the price is based on evidence rather than an allowance for uncertainty.
- A first position in hours and a full report in days, instead of six to twelve weeks of spreadsheet reconciliation.
- Fewer adviser hours on both sides, which means lower fees, and we contribute to yours at completion.
- One batched set of questions rather than months of drip-fed follow-ups.
- Unclaimed commission surfaces early, and it is paid to you before completion or reflected in the price.
- Offers are far less likely to move late, because there is little left to discover at the eleventh hour.
A process that commonly runs four to six months elsewhere completes in eight to twelve weeks with us, with fewer adviser hours on both sides and a price that holds from heads of terms to completion.
Clearbook is what lets us keep diligence light touch. Because the book is already evidenced, our own internal team can focus on the few things that genuinely matter instead of asking for everything, and anything that could become a stumbling block usually shows up before formal diligence begins, so both sides start aligned and work together to get it completed.
What stops us using your data and walking away
It is a fair question, and it is the one every seller thinks about even if they do not say it out loud. You are being asked to show your book to a company that also sells energy contracts. Here is exactly what protects you.
Meter numbers only, no customer identities
The only identifier Clearbook needs is the MPAN or MPRN. No customer names, no site contacts, no phone numbers, no email addresses. A meter number on its own is of no commercial use to anyone wanting to approach your customers.
You upload, we read a summary
Your data goes into Clearbook, not into our inbox. What comes back to the deal team is a summary report about the book as a whole: values, dates, volumes, concentration. The underlying line-by-line detail stays where you put it.
The NDA prohibits any approach
Our mutual confidentiality agreement expressly stops us contacting your customers, staff or suppliers in connection with the transaction. It is signed before anything is uploaded, and it binds us after the process ends, whether we complete or not.
Deleted if we do not proceed
If a deal does not go ahead, your uploaded data and the report are deleted on request, with only what law or routine backups require retained. Nothing is folded into our own book.
Access limited to the deal team
Your Secure Area and your Clearbook report are visible only to the named people handling your transaction. Our sales teams have no access and are not told a discussion is happening.
You see the same report we do
The report is shared with you at the same time. There is no version of the analysis you have not seen, and anything it finds in your favour, such as unclaimed commission, is yours.
There is also a commercial reality worth stating. We are a regulated, audited energy company with more than 200 sub-broker partners who trust us with their own books. Our entire indirect channel depends on being the buyer that behaves properly. Misusing a seller's data would end that overnight, and it is worth far more to us than any single acquisition.
The risks in a typical due diligence process, and how Clearbook removes them
In a conventional sale, the most sensitive thing you own, your customer list, is emailed to a competitor in week one and you simply have to trust them with it. With Clearbook that never happens, because the analysis does not need it. If we never complete, there is nothing of value for us to have taken.
How to see it for yourself
You do not have to take any of this on trust before you have seen it. Register for the Secure Area, sign the mutual confidentiality agreement, and we will show you exactly what we look at and why before you upload anything at all.
When you are ready, a Clearbook run on a sample of your meter points gives you a report on your own book, free, whether or not you go on to sell. Several owners have used it purely to recover commission they were owed.
Run Clearbook on your book
Meter numbers only. You keep the report whatever you decide to do next.
Register for the Secure AreaSee the full diligence processAnswer a few questions and, once you have registered and signed the mutual NDA, see an indicative range straight away.
Register for the Secure Area and sign the mutual NDA. Clearbook does the contract due diligence, so the questions we ask you are few and specific.
Have a confidential conversation with us
Thirty minutes with our acquisitions team, with an NDA first if you prefer. We will not contact your customers, staff or suppliers without your say-so.