Energy Billing

Requirement

You need a smart-me Professional subscription to be able to create energy bills. 

Video smart-me billing

This video explains step by step how to configure a property in the Billing Tool.

Configure billing step by step 

With this step-by-step guide we would like to support you in configuring your billing. Please note that this is only an example to guide you. Depending on the structure of your property, there will be differences to our example. 

Example energy bill.pdf

1. Install and label the meter

Before you can start with the configuration, all meters must be installed in the relevant account. Once this is done, we recommend that you label the meters to get a better overview. This is done in the settings of the individual meter. 

Our recommendation for meter designations:
Medium_Unit_serial number
In this way, this information is sent directly with reports or alarms in the event of a malfunction. 

2. create folder structure and assign meters 

The folder structure differs depending on the billing type and size of the ZEV and has a direct influence on the billing options in smart-me Billing.

2a. Only electricity with or without e-mobility in individual buildings or complexes

Altgasse ZEV electricity (tariff folder for billing, two-tier is maximum!)

Billing is set up at this point and includes all apartments, rooms, parking spaces as a subordinate folder and its relevant electricity meters (100% is aimed at one invoice recipient).

ZEV technical counters
(separate folder for meters that are not or indirectly billed - not sub folder)

All meters that are used for tariffing, monitoring or apportionment purposes can be added to this folder on several levels.

2a. Basic structure

2a. Detail structure

2b. Electricity with or without e-mobility and multi-energy with one building.

Altgasse ZEV electricity (tariff folder for billing, two-tier is maximum!)

Billing is set up at this point and includes all apartments, rooms, parking spaces as a subordinate folder and its relevant electricity meters (100% is aimed at one invoice recipient).

ZEV technical counter
(separate folder for meters that are not or indirectly billed - not sub folder)

All meters that are used for tariffing, monitoring or apportionment purposes can be added to this folder on several levels.

2b. Basic structure

2b. Detail structure

2c. Electricity with or without e-mobility and multi-energy with several buildings. (complexes)

For billing of complexes with multiple heating systems, the relevant buildings must be in the same league. The buildings with shared heating systems are merged into one property accordingly.

Note: In this case, the electricity tariffs in each property must be maintained individually.

Altgasse 13 (separate heating system for the building)

At this point, a billing system is set up and includes all apartments, rooms, parking spaces as a subordinate folder and its relevant electricity meters. Correspondingly, all heat and water meters that measure energy consumption from the same source. (100% is directed to one invoice recipient).

Altgasse 15 + 17 (shared central heating system with hot water preparation)

At this point, a billing is set up and includes all apartments, rooms, parking spaces as a subordinate folder and its relevant electricity meters. Correspondingly, all heat and water meters that measure energy from the same source are also included. (100% is directed to one invoice recipient).

Altgasse 19 (own heating system for the building)

At this point, a billing is set up and includes all apartments, rooms, parking spaces as a subordinate folder and its relevant electricity meters. Correspondingly, all heat and water meters that measure energy consumption from the same source. (100% is directed to one invoice recipient).

The technically relevant meters (same level as the property - no subfolder) 

All meters that are used for tariffing, monitoring or allocation purposes can be added to this folder on several levels.

Examples

2c. Basic structure

2c. Detail structure

2d. Converting cold water meters

Some M-Bus meter manufacturers indicate that the meter is a cold water meter when transmitting data. This is despite the fact that it should be a hot water meter. In this case, the meter type must be overridden in smart-me.

Note: This manipulation is not possible with heat and cold meters for technical reasons.

3. Create property 

Click on Configuration, Create Invoice, Configuration again and then Add Property. Select the property you created in step 2. It will now be displayed together with the billing units on the left side under Properties. 

4. Add billing addresses

A billing address must be added to each billing unit that has to be billed. To do this, click on the corresponding billing unit on the left and click on Add under Billing Address. A window opens in which you can enter the data of the invoice recipients. 

If no address is entered for a billing unit, no invoice is generated for it. This may be desired in some cases, for example if you want to distribute the general meter to all tenants.
In our example, no addresses are added to the PV and general billing units. 

Note: An invoice is generated for each billing address stored in a settlement unit, even if the fields Address and E-mail are empty. If, for example, you enter two tenants in a settlement unit, invoices will be generated for both.

5. Assign meters to the billing units 

When creating the property, the meters are automatically added to the billing unit in whose folder they are located. However, it may be desired that a meter is distributed proportionally to other billing units. In our example, the general meter must be divided between the two flats.

Click on the corresponding billing unit and scroll to the Electricity window. The meter of the billing unit is already displayed here (in the example, the meter of Appartment 1) Now click on Add, select the required meter and specify the percentage to be charged to the billing unit.
It is important that the meters are distributed exactly 100 %. For this reason, the general meter in our example is deleted from the billing unit General. Otherwise it would be distributed 200 % (50 % for both tenants and 100 % in the general folder).

The explained procedure works analogously for the other energy types (heat, cold, etc.).

Tip: In most cases, the general meter should be distributed equally among all tenants/billing units. For example, with 3 tenants, this results in a percentage of 33.3333.... %. In such a case, please enter the percentage to three decimal places (i.e. 33.333 % for each of 3 tenants). 

6. Configure tariffs  

In smart-me billing, you can either work with electricity tariffs or with virtual tariffs.

6a. Virtual tariffs

Virtual tariffs allow you to define your own dynamic tariff model for energy billing. This can be used to distinguish between tenants drawing electricity from a solar installation or from the grid for their own consumption if merging of private energy consumption (tenant electricity) is used. 

Please note that all normal electricity tariffs must be deleted.

You will see all the virtual tariffs that have already been entered under Virtual tariffs. Click on Add.

Name: The name of the tariff is also displayed to the user (tenant)

Tariff type 

Solar or battery meter

For the solar and battery tariff, you must specify a meter that measures all consumers to which this energy is to be distributed. This can also be a virtual meter that totals all consumers (note that virtual meters require an additional licence).

Balance meter (optional)
A balance meter can optionally be specified for the solar tariff.  If the balance meter is specified, the energy that is fed into the grid is taken into account when calculating the solar tariff. This means that for each 15 minutes, only the solar energy that was actually consumed in the building is distributed (energy available = PV production - grid feed-in).

Price/kWh: The price for this tariff

Valid from: The start date from which this tariff applies

Valid until: The end date for the validity of this tariff

Additional condition
You can define when this tariff is valid with an additional condition. This can be a time period (e.g. for high/low tariff) or any other condition. The condition must have been defined beforehand as an If/ Then action.

For the solar and battery tariff, we do not recommend specifying an additional condition. If you still want to use high/low tariff for the solar and battery tariff, you have to define an If/ Then action for each high and low tariff. Then you can assign the high and low tariff condition to the tariff type "Normal tariff" and "Solar tariff".

Example: 

Note:

6b. Electricity tariffs

To access the electricity tariff settings, click on the property on the left and scroll to the green Tariffs Electricity window. Here the two tariffs T1 and T2 are displayed. Select one of the tariffs and click on Edit to make changes to its properties (e.g. name, price, etc.).

In order to be able to work with the electricity tariffs, the tariff signal of the electricity company must be connected to the tariff input of the corresponding meters. 

6c. Water, heat, cold and gas

For other energy types (heat, cold water, etc.) there is a standard tariff for which the properties can be adjusted analogously.

7a. Configure other costs for property

Additional cost items can be added in the Others field. 

Example: The basic costs for meter rental and services must be charged monthly. 

7b. 7a. Configure other costs for individual billing units (tenants)

In billing, separate "Others" items can be added to individual billing units (apartments/tenants)! For example, individual meter rent can be charged or bills already paid on account (negative amount) can be subtracted. 

Billing others items

8. Store IBAN in smart-me Billing (optional)

Enable QR-Invoices, store the requested data and save.

Once the account details have been stored, a QR-bill is attached for the payment for each billing unit (tenant).

smart-me automatically recognizes the correctly completed senders if the billing address is stored on 3-4 lines in Billing. 

e.g.

Peter Lustig

Löwenzahnstrasse 42

6666 Risch

If no correct address is recognized, the Sender (Payable by) field in the QR-bill remains empty.

smart-me does not support reference numbers. In order to be able to use these, a third-party system is required which also supports this (e.g. Bexio). 

To identify the invoice without a reference, additional information (message to the beneficiary) is added to the QR-bill, which is made up as follows: Name of the billing unit (folder name), creation date of the invoice and invoice number.

The presentation is optimized for sending by e-mail. If the invoices are printed out, we recommend deactivating the QR-bill and ordering it from the bank.

9. Recalculate

If the virtual tariffs are used, click on Recalculate at the end of the configuration (as well as for any later configuration changes). This will recalculate all past values.

10. Create an alarm for a connection failure

In this way, you will notice at an early stage if a meter fails and minimise the resulting gap in measurement data. You can see more about this under Alarms. 

Helpful hints

Create a separate account for each ZEV.

This way, any transfers of properties are easier, as meters can only be moved to another account by reinstalling them. Past measurement data is not transferred and remains in the old account. 

Visualisation 

A new tile is now displayed in the default view of the residence folder. It specifies the meter readings for the virtual tariffs. Clicking on this tile will display the load profile for the virtual tariffs.

Tenant view

A special view for tenants is available for the virtual tariffs. This shows the current energy consumption (electricity) and the origin (solar or grid). In addition, the percentage origin of the energy is displayed in a bar.

Example of solar power sharing

Example

A house consists of two flats and a solar installation. The following tariffs are defined:

Tenant A is not often at home during the day and mainly uses grid electricity (in the evening):

Tenant B tries to consume solar power as much as possible (consumers mainly run when the sun is shining):

Tenant A and tenant B have the same energy consumption. However, since tenant B uses more solar electricity, he benefits from the cheaper solar electricity tariff.

Error messages and warnings

On this page you will find a description of the most common error messages and possible solutions: Billing error messages