Utility management module
Utility billing and cost reallocation software that shows its working
Read the meters, book the supplier invoice, choose the allocation key, preview the result, issue in a batch. Every figure on a tenant's statement can be traced back to the document it came from.
- Meters and sub-meters for electricity, water, hot water, gas, heating, sanitation and internet
- Batch reading entry built for walking a building meter by meter
- Allocation by area, person, unit, consumption share or a custom expression
- Per-client rebilling sheet PDF showing how each figure was derived
The full chain
From the supply contract to the meter that measures it
Rebilling only holds up if the supply side is modelled properly. Supplier, contract, price schedule, site and meter are separate records, because in practice they change on separate dates.
Suppliers and supply contracts
Every utility supplier you buy from, and the supply contracts you hold with them. The contract carries the utility type, the period and the terms the rest of the module reads from.
Utility price schedules
Unit rates and standing components held against the supply contract, so consumption is costed against the schedule that belongs to that contract and period, not a single global tariff.
Consumption sites
The point at which a supply lands: a building, a stair, a courtyard connection. Sites sit between the supply contract and the meters, and they are what allocation formulas refer to.
Meters and sub-meters
Main meters and sub-meters, with the hierarchy between them recorded. Each meter attaches to the entity it serves — property, housing unit or common space — in m³, litres, kWh or MWh.
Meter readings
Readings kept as a dated series and marked as read, estimated or linearly interpolated. Consumption between any two dates can be recomputed when a period boundary moves.
Supplier invoices
Supplier meter readings and supplier invoices, including compound documents that cover several utilities or periods at once and must be separated before anything can be allocated.
The cycle
How a rebilling period runs, from reading day to issued invoice
The same sequence works for a monthly pass-through and for an annual ancillary cost statement. Only the period length and the number of documents change.
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Take the readings
Walk the building and enter values in the batch reading screen, meter after meter, in the order they are installed. Estimated and interpolated values are flagged as such.
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Book the supplier documents
Record the supplier meter readings and the supplier invoice. If one document covers several utilities or periods, book it as a compound invoice and split it into its parts.
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Generate rebilling entries
Entries group by utility type and rebilling mode — real-time pass-through, or periodic adjustment against a settlement period — so heating, water and electricity are never mixed.
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Set the allocation
Choose the allocation key per entry, or write an expression over the consumption sites involved. The formula is parsed and checked when you save it, not when the invoice is issued.
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Preview before issuing
The dashboard shows the period's entries and an invoice preview per client. Check that the allocated amounts add back up to the supplier document before anything leaves the system.
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Issue in a batch
Select the entries and issue. Invoices are created for the whole period at once, under the correct legal entity, and passed to the connected invoicing platform.
Measurement
Sub-metering software built around the reading round
Buildings are not read from a desk. Someone opens a meter cupboard, writes down a number, moves to the next riser. The batch reading screen is built for that: the meters at a consumption site, one field each, in the order you walk them.
Sub-meters hang under main meters, and that relationship is recorded. The difference between what the supplier measured at the main meter and what the sub-meters account for stays visible rather than silently absorbed — common-area consumption usually lives in exactly that gap.
Readings are typed as read, estimated or linearly interpolated, and an estimate stays labelled as an estimate all the way through to the tenant's rebilling sheet. Electricity meters can also carry inductive and capacitive reactive energy alongside the active consumption used for allocation.
The supplier side
Compound supplier invoices and standing charges
Suppliers rarely send one clean document per utility per period. A single invoice may cover gas and electricity, or two months, or a correction to a period you already settled. Compound supplier invoices exist for that: record the document as it arrived, then split it into the parts that can be allocated.
Not every cost has a meter behind it. Basic charges, meter rent, grid fees and flat components are recorded as unmetered consumption positions and allocated on their own key — usually per unit or per square metre — while the consumption component follows the readings.
Keeping the two apart is what makes a service charge reconciliation defensible. The tenant sees a consumption figure that came from a meter and a standing charge that came from an invoice line, not one blended number nobody can take apart.
Allocation keys
Choosing the allocation key for each cost
An allocation key is an expression evaluated by a formula engine over the consumption sites in the entry. The common keys are configured directly; anything unusual is written out.
| Allocation key | What it divides by | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Per square metre | Recorded area of the unit against the total allocable area | Heating, building insurance, general ancillary costs |
| Per person | Occupant count attached to the unit | Water, hot water, waste and sanitation |
| Per unit | Equal share across the units served by the site | Basic charges, meter rent, stair lighting |
| Per consumption share | The unit's sub-meter reading against total measured consumption | Electricity, individually metered water and heat |
| Custom expression | Arithmetic over any consumption sites in the entry, plus fixed coefficients | Mixed keys, partial pass-through, negotiated splits for a single commercial tenant |
Areas roll up automatically from rooms to housing units to properties, so an area-based key uses the same figures as the rest of the portfolio record rather than a separate spreadsheet.
Worked example
One building's heating cost, from supplier invoice to tenant line item
A mixed-use building: six flats and one ground-floor business space, one gas supply, one main heat meter, one sub-meter on the business space. Follow a single tenant's charge through the period.
The supplier invoice arrives for the heating period and separates into two parts — a consumption component that follows the meters, and a standing charge for the connection and the meter rent.
The main meter fixes the unit rate. The supplier meter reading shows 120,000 kWh consumed at the building's consumption site over the period, and the consumption component divided by that quantity gives the cost per kWh for this period, derived from the documents rather than carried over from last year.
The sub-metered unit is taken out first. The business space has its own heat sub-meter reading 18,000 kWh, priced at the period rate and allocated directly to that tenant on a per consumption share key. That leaves 102,000 kWh to be shared by the flats.
The residual is allocated by area. The six flats have 600 m² of heated area between them, so a 72 m² flat carries 12 per cent of what remains — 12,240 kWh — costed at the same period rate.
The standing charge follows its own key. It is recorded as an unmetered consumption position and split per unit across all seven units served by the connection, including the flat in this example.
The tenant's line item is the sum of the two: the area share of the consumption cost plus the per-unit share of the standing charge. The rebilling sheet shows every step above, so the tenant can check the arithmetic without asking you for the supplier invoice.
Figures are illustrative and describe how the calculation runs. They are not a customer result and not a price quotation.
Before it goes out
The checks that happen between calculation and issue
Rebilling errors are expensive because they arrive in writing, at the same time, at every tenant in the building. The dashboard exists to catch them one step earlier.
- Rebilling dashboard — every entry for the period in one place, grouped by utility type and rebilling mode, with open entries and already processed ones clearly separated
- Invoice preview per client — see the invoice each client would receive, with its consumption lines, before a document is created — how much consumption detail appears on the invoice is configurable
- Formula validation — allocation expressions are parsed when saved, so an unresolvable reference or a division by zero is reported as a validation error on the entry rather than discovered during issuing
- Consumption reports — consumption reports and meter-reading timelines per site and per meter, where a leaking pipe or a mis-set sub-meter shows up as a step change before a tenant complains
The document tenants keep
The rebilling sheet: an ancillary cost statement that explains itself
Each client can be issued a rebilling sheet as a PDF, branded with your logo, colours and type sizes. It is not a summary. It shows the derivation: the supplier document and period, the total cost, the allocation key applied, the meter readings used, and the arithmetic behind the figure on the invoice.
That is the difference between an ancillary cost statement that gets paid and one that generates a month of correspondence. The tenant can follow the line from their own meter to their own charge.
The sheet is generated from the same records the invoice was issued from, so the two cannot drift apart. Where a period was estimated or interpolated, the sheet says so.
Not a standalone tool
What rebilling reads from the rest of the system
The utility module is worth having because it sits on the same records as everything else. Nothing is re-keyed, and the areas, contracts and legal entities it uses are the ones already on file.
Portfolio and areas
Meters attach to properties, housing units and common spaces from the portfolio management module, and area-based keys use the areas that roll up from the rooms.
Contracts and clients
Who is billed, for which unit, over which dates comes from the rental contract module, including bailment agreements and early terminations that change a billing period mid-term.
Invoicing and accounting
Issued rebilling invoices flow into the finance and accounting integrations: the connected invoicing platform with VAT on payment, and the accounting connector over GraphQL.
Reporting
Consumption and meter-reading timelines join revenue timelines in reporting and analytics, grouped by property group, legal entity or both.
Who runs this cycle
Where utility rebilling is most of the job
The module is used hardest by the people who bill utilities for a living, and by managers running the same period-end across many buildings at once.
Utility billing providers
For businesses whose core service is rebilling utilities to occupants: compound supplier invoices, batch meter readings, custom allocation formulas and a preview before anything is issued.
Property management companies
The audience most likely to run this cycle across many buildings at once, under several legal entities, with a branded statement per client.
Facility management
Heating systems, heat pumps and photovoltaic installations are registered as technical assets next to the meters that measure them.
Pricing
What the module costs
Utility Billing / Cost Reallocation is an optional module added to a Standard or Extended base plan. Every module is flat-rated per month at the published rate.
Rentals & Contracts
Rental contracts, bailment agreements, tenants and deadline reminders.
Utility Billing & Cost Reallocation
Meters, supplier invoices, allocation keys and rebilling invoices.
Accounting & Invoicing Integration
Issue documents on your invoicing platform and post them to the ledger.
Investment & Business Analyses
Revenue timelines, consumption analysis and investment calculations.
Facility Management
Technical asset register, asset connections and service partners.
All prices exclude VAT. Plan limits, overage rates for larger portfolios and a live cost estimator are on the pricing page.
Questions
Asked when this module is evaluated
Is this heating cost allocation software, or general utility billing?
Both. Heating is one of eight utility types the module handles, alongside electricity, water, hot water, gas, sanitation, internet and a general category. Heating cost allocation typically combines a sub-metered share with an area-based residual and a standing charge, and all three are configured as separate rebilling entries against the same supplier invoice.
How does it handle one supplier invoice covering several utilities or periods?
Record it as a compound supplier invoice. The document is kept as it arrived, then split into the component parts that can be allocated: one part per utility, per period, or per cost type. Each part becomes its own rebilling entry with its own allocation key, and each part is traceable back to the original document.
What allocation keys are supported?
Per square metre, per person, per unit and per consumption share are configured directly. Anything else is written as an expression over the consumption sites in the entry and evaluated by a formula engine, which covers mixed keys, partial pass-through and negotiated splits. Expressions are parsed and validated when saved, not at issue time.
Can tenants see how their charge was calculated?
Yes. Each client can be issued a rebilling sheet as a branded PDF showing the supplier document, the period, the total cost, the allocation key, the meter readings used and the resulting figure. Readings that were estimated or interpolated rather than physically read are labelled as such on the sheet.
What does the utility billing module cost?
Utility Billing / Cost Reallocation is an optional module, charged per month at the published module rate on top of a Standard or Extended base plan. All prices exclude VAT. Full plan limits, module options and a cost estimator are on the pricing page.
Next step
See it run against a building you actually manage
Bring one supplier invoice and one building's meter list to a walkthrough, and we will model it live. That is usually enough to tell whether the allocation logic fits how you bill.