Settling an Electricity Invoice Across Tenants

An electricity invoice for a building with sub-metered tenants has to be shared out in two different ways. Each tenant with a sub-meter pays for the energy their own meter recorded, and is re-invoiced for it on their utilities invoice. The rest, the energy used by the common areas plus the invoice's fixed charges, is carried by every tenant in proportion to the area they lease, and is booked to budgets rather than invoiced.

Settle energy does both from the supplier invoice itself, at the price that invoice charges. Nothing is booked until the figures add back up to the invoice.

When Settle energy is offered

Your organisation chooses, per utility, how a utility invoice is shared out: filled by meter, with Fill by meter consumption and a price you type, or settled from the invoice. Settling from the invoice is chosen per organisation and is off unless it has been switched on for yours; ask Flowtly support to change it.

With electricity settled from the invoice, an incoming invoice that carries an active-energy line shows Settle energy among the fill buttons of its Categorization section. An invoice without such a line, a cleaning invoice for example, is never offered it. Fill by meter consumption stays available for every utility that is still filled by meter, and no longer lists electricity.

The settlement drawer

Settle energy opens the Settle the energy invoice drawer. It shows the settlement as it would be booked, section by section.

Invoice

The supplier, the invoice number, the Usage period, the month whose utilities invoices carry the tenant charges (Lands on tenant invoices for: the month after the usage period, or later if your organisation bills in arrears by more months), the active-energy line as kWh times price, the fixed charges, and the net, VAT and gross totals.

The Unit price (net per kWh) and the Invoice kWh are read from the invoice's energy lines. The price changes every month, so it is never kept on the building. If the PDF says something different, correct either figure and press Recalculate. When the price cannot be read from the invoice, type the unit price and the kWh from the PDF yourself, then recalculate. Numbers are typed with your organisation's own decimal and thousands separators.

Buildings

Choose the buildings whose meters the invoice covers. Flowtly remembers the choice and proposes it on the next invoice from the same supplier. The list stays visible, so you can change the buildings and recalculate.

Sub-metered tenants: re-invoice

One row per tenant with an electricity sub-meter in those buildings: each meter's opening and closing readings, the kWh between them, and the amount at the invoice's price. Each tenant's charge is the sum of its meters' amounts.

A reading taken a few days before or after the usage period is prorated by days. A reading further outside the period, or a meter with days of the period that have no data, needs your decision: Prorate by days, Take as is, or wait for the reading and come back later.

Leave out this meter takes a meter out of the settlement, for example a meter already counted by another one. Include all meters brings every left-out meter back. The meters you left out are remembered when you open the settlement again.

When no tenant in the chosen buildings has an electricity sub-meter, the whole net goes to the common areas.

Remainder: common areas, split by area

The common areas' kWh at the invoice's price, plus every fixed charge, split over every lease in the chosen buildings by leased area and booked to each lease's budget. Nobody is invoiced for it. The remainder is not shown until every meter can be closed, because spreading it earlier would move a tenant's use onto the common areas.

The three checks

Three checks must agree before the settlement can be confirmed. Each shows Agrees, Mismatch or Cannot close yet.

Amount: the invoice net equals the tenant re-invoices plus the common-area split, to the grosz.
Energy: the invoice kWh equals the sub-meters plus the common areas. The common areas are never negative, so sub-meters that add up to more than the invoice point to a wrong reading; the drawer names the meter to check first.
Period: every opening and closing reading brackets the usage period.

Confirming

Confirm split books the invoice's cost and the common-area share to the budgets, and records each re-invoiced tenant's charge as that tenant's final electricity statement for the usage month, in one step. The invoice's project split then shows the result.

Confirming never creates or changes an invoice. The tenant's charge is billed on its utilities invoice in Bulk lease invoicing for the month shown under Lands on tenant invoices for, where it is drafted and issued together with the rent and the service charge. See Tenant utilities statements.

Confirm stays disabled:

until all three checks agree and no problem is listed under Confirm is disabled until these are resolved;
after you change the price or the kWh, until you press Recalculate;
after a recalculation fails, until one succeeds. Use Retry to recalculate with the buildings and meters currently chosen;
with no building chosen.

Confirming decides what tenants are invoiced, so it needs the invoice manager role. Without it you can open and review the settlement, and the drawer asks you to have an administrator confirm it.

What stops a settlement

Each problem is listed in one sentence that names the tenant, the month, the meter or the invoice concerned. The most common:

A reading is missing, overlaps another, or goes down. Add or correct the reading in the meter's history, then recalculate. See Importing Meter Readings.
A lease starts or ends inside the usage period, has no project to book to, or has no leased area. A meter on more than one active lease is refused too, because it would be billed twice.
The invoice already has a project split typed by hand, on the whole invoice or on one of its lines. The settlement never overwrites it: remove that split in the categorisation first.
A tenant already has an electricity statement for the month that this settlement did not record: one calculated from a tariff, or one recorded by settling another supplier invoice for the same lease and month. The settlement never replaces it.
A tenant's energy line from an earlier confirmation is still on an invoice. Remove that line from the invoice, then confirm again. A line on an issued invoice cannot be removed this way.
The month's utilities invoices were already issued in Bulk lease invoicing, and confirming would change or drop a tenant's charge. The refusal names the invoices concerned.
Your organisation has no default currency set.
The invoice states no usage period, or has no net amount.

Settling the same invoice again

Opening Settle energy on an invoice that was already settled proposes the buildings and left-out meters that settlement used. The unit price and the kWh are read from the invoice again: if you corrected either one before, correct it again and recalculate.

Confirming again replaces the tenant statements this settlement recorded, and withdraws the statement of a tenant it no longer re-invoices, so each tenant is billed for the month once. The earlier statement is kept, replaced, for the record. Once the month's utilities invoices have been issued, the settlement refuses to confirm when it would change or drop a tenant's charge.

Example use cases

Monthly electricity for a sub-metered building: Re-invoice each tenant's own kWh at the supplier's price on their next utilities invoice, and spread the common-area energy and fixed charges over the leases by area.
Correcting a misread price: Type the unit price from the PDF, recalculate, and check that all three checks agree before confirming.
Finding a wrong reading: When the sub-meters add up to more than the invoice, start with the meter the energy check names.
Leaving out a meter counted twice: Leave out a meter whose energy is already included in another tenant's meter.