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If you’re reading this, then it stands to reason that you have a business, or are involved with a company.  And unless your business involves using oxen to drive your crops to market, your business operates in the 21st Century, and will therefore need business energy to power it up and drive its ability to function and generate money.  Business energy management can be confusing, which is why Utility Helpline are on hand as an information resource, to walk you through the industry and what’s required to plug in, and get your business working.   There are a number of different business energy contracts to which you can sign up to.  Let’s start with the worse case scenario and work up to the right.  Say you have just moved into new premises, opened up the doors and shutters, and switched on the lights.  If you haven’t used Utility Helpline to source the right gas and electricity provider, it will be assumed you have taken on the previous tenant’s supply.  This is called a Deemed Contract, where you are subject to whatever deal the previous tenant had in place which, in many cases, may be a third higher than you should be paying. Next up we have 28 Day Rolling Supply Contracts.  The energy sector was deregulated 20 years ago and around half a million businesses are on these contracts, possibly because they’ve never used a company like Utility Helpline to assist them switching.  The contract does what it says on the tin – a business can change their deal, or switch supplier completely, with only 28 days notice.  However, those companies who haven’t are likely to be paying vastly over the odds, compared to what they might. Finally, we have the Fixed Term Energy Supply Contract.  These are usually fixed for up to five years and the benefit is security in the knowledge that over that time the price of energy is (in most cases!) fixed, which creates stability in terms of accounting and forward financial planning.  Of course no one has a magic crystal ball that predicts what energy prices will do, so rather like a mortgage, it’s worth looking to a broker, like Utility Helpline, to decide at what price to fix, and for how long. However this is always likely to be a better long-term prospect than the previous two forms of contract, so when you’re in your new premises, as soon as you’ve located the kettle and the tea bags, fix yourself a cuppa and look to move to a fixed term contract at the earliest opportunity. Save