Billing meter consumption on a client invoice

Flowtly Editorial Team4 min

When a project occupies metered assets, the utility consumption those meters recorded can be billed to the client on the project's own invoice. You choose the billing month, decide whether the meters are included, and choose how their consumption is measured — either as the month's prorated share, or as the exact difference between two readings you pick yourself.

Navigation: Open a project and click Invoice. The button appears for users whose role allows invoices to be created.

The Create an invoice drawer

The drawer collects everything the draft is built from:

  • Period — the month being billed.
  • Scope — which kinds of charge to include: associated costs (optionally narrowed by tag), properties, work time, and sub-projects.
  • Meters — whether to bill metered consumption, and how.

Tick Counters in the Meters section to include the meters on the assets booked to that project. Only meters on booked assets are considered; book the metered asset to the project and its meters follow.

Choosing how consumption is measured

With Counters ticked, a choice of two billing modes appears.

Whole month (prorated)

The default. Consumption is spread evenly across the days between each pair of consecutive readings, and the month is billed the share of those days that fall inside it. Readings therefore do not have to be taken on the first or last day of the month, and a month containing no reading of its own still bills its portion of the surrounding span.

Each line in the preview can be expanded to show how its quantity was reached: the period, the readings either side of it, the consumption between them, the number of days involved, and the amount billed.

Between two readings

Bills exactly what two readings account for, with no spreading across days. Every meter found for the month gets its own From and To picker, listing that meter's readings by date and value. Readings recorded as estimates are marked, so you can tell a real count from an estimate before choosing it.

The pickers start on the pair that brackets the month you selected — the last reading on or before it begins and the first on or after it ends — and you can change either one. Changing the billing month clears the pickers and preselects them again for the new month, so a pair chosen for one month is never carried into another.

A meter holding only a single reading cannot be billed this way and says so; add a second reading to bill it exactly, or use the prorated mode instead.

Which figure a pair produces depends on how the meter records its readings. A meter whose readings are counter indexes bills the difference between the two you chose. A meter whose readings are each already a period's consumption bills the sum of the readings the chosen bracket covers, rather than the difference between its two endpoints.

Checking what will be billed

Below the mode selector, a preview lists what the meters will bill for the period, so the figures can be checked before the draft is created. Each meter appears as its own line, including several meters of the same utility on one property — they are not merged into a single total, and each keeps its own name on the invoice. A meter with no consumption to bill for the period produces no line at all.

Review the preview against the month you intend to bill. In Between two readings mode in particular, confirm that both pickers name the readings you meant to bill before creating the invoice, since the pair you choose is billed exactly as it stands.

Click Create an invoice to generate the draft, which then behaves like any other invoice: it can be edited, previewed, and sent.

Example use cases

  • Recharge a tenant's electricity for the month on the same invoice as their rent and service charges.
  • Bill a full month of water even though the meters were last read part-way through the previous month.
  • Bill precisely the consumption between two counter readings taken at the start and end of a tenancy, rather than a calendar month's share.
  • Invoice a property whose electricity, heating, and sub-metered supply are each recorded separately, and show them to the client as separate lines.
  • Check what each meter contributes to a month before generating the invoice draft.

Connection map

Refers toUses upPart ofDerived from
Documented hereDocumented elsewhere
invoice billed to counterparty. invoice taxed by tax-group. cost spends against budget. cost owed to counterparty. bank-transaction reconciled to invoice. contract schedules payment-schedule-line. contract attached to budget. budget covers project. invoice billed from project. project linked to budget. lead becomes counterparty. deal sold to counterparty.billed totaxed byspends againstowed toreconciled toschedulesattached tocoversbilled fromlinked tobecomessold toIInvoice — A sales document issued to a client: line items, dates, tax. It is created, reviewed, previewed and then sent.InvoiceCCounterparty — The other side of a financial document — a client billed, or a supplier owed.CounterpartyTTax group — The tax treatment applied to a line, so rates are set once rather than per document.Tax groupCCost — Money the organisation owes or has spent, tracked against a budget.CostBBudget — The financial envelope an engagement is measured against — what was planned, versus what has actually been spent.BudgetBBank transaction — A movement on a connected bank account. Matching it to an invoice or a cost is what makes the books agree with the bank.Bank transactionCContract — The financial terms of an engagement: a structured set of payment schedule lines, in one direction or the other.ContractPPayment schedule line — One dated amount on a contract, in a direction — money owed to a supplier, or due from a client.Payment schedule linePProject — The core organizational unit for a business initiative, client engagement or internal work. Everything tracked — time, cost, invoicing, profitability — hangs off one.ProjectPProspect — A company you are working but that is not a customer yet. It sits at New, Contacted or Qualified, and everything done to it is logged against it.ProspectDDeal — A sale in progress: a customer, an amount, and the stage it has reached. It cannot exist without a customer, and its stage is never blank.Deal

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