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Utilities

The Utilities module tracks consumption and cost for shared facility utilities: electricity (ECG main + sub-meters), water (GWCL + overhead-tank pumps), bulk LPG, internet, security feeds. Read meters, allocate costs, surface unusual usage.

What residents see

If your facility passes utility costs through to residents:

  • My Utilities widget on the dashboard with this month's reading and the calculated charge for each metered service.
  • Statement breakdown shows the cost-per-unit and total per utility on every monthly invoice.
  • History — last 12 months of consumption, useful for residents comparing across seasons.

If your facility absorbs utilities into a flat service charge, residents don't see this module at all.

What facility admins / staff do

Register meters

Utilities → Add Meter:

  1. Type — electricity, water, gas, internet, other.
  2. Label (e.g. "Main ECG Meter", "Block A water sub-meter").
  3. Serial number — for cross-checking with the utility provider.
  4. Location — where the meter physically lives.
  5. Cost per unit — current rate (GHS per kWh, per cubic metre, etc.). Pass-through rates can be tied to the upstream provider's tariff.
  6. Multiplier — if the meter is a current transformer (CT) meter, the reading × multiplier gives actual consumption.
  7. Direction — consumption (most meters) or generation (solar).

Log readings

The Readings tab is your monthly meter-reading workflow:

  1. Pick a meter.
  2. Enter the new reading (or scan a photo of the meter face — system tries to OCR the digits).
  3. The system auto-calculates consumption since the last reading and the cost.
  4. Save.

For sub-metered facilities (one main ECG meter + per-block sub-meters), log all sub-meter readings on the same date. The system reconciles the sub-meter sum against the main meter to surface any leakage.

Allocate to invoices

Settings → Utilities → Allocation Rules: - Direct pass-through — sub-meter readings post directly to the unit's invoice for the relevant period. - Pro-rata — main-meter cost split across units by floor area / bedroom count / fixed allocation. - Mixed — common areas pro-rata, units direct.

The system runs the allocation when you generate the cycle's invoices.

Alerts

Utilities → Alerts flags: - A meter reading well above the unit's running average (potential leak / fault) - A meter reading below average (potential bypass / theft) - A meter not read this cycle - Sub-meter sum < main meter (leakage > threshold)

Each alert links to the relevant meter and the historical readings.

Reports + dashboard

Utilities → Reports has: - Consumption trends per utility per month - Cost analysis (utility cost as % of total expenses) - Anomalies (units with consumption > 2 standard deviations from type-average — useful for spotting failed appliances or unauthorized occupants) - Loss analysis (sub-meter sum vs main meter reconciliation)

A Dashboard tab sits alongside Reports with KPI tiles + charts — total consumption, cost, anomaly count, sub-meter / main-meter variance. Same period selector + periodic-email pattern as other module dashboards.

Tips

  • Read on the same day every month — keeps consumption windows consistent and makes comparisons meaningful.
  • Photograph meter faces — disputes about "did you really get 245 units?" go away when you have a date-stamped photo.
  • Set alert thresholds tight — better a false-positive on a high-usage month than missing a 30,000-unit leak that ran undetected for 60 days.
  • Reconcile main vs sub-meters monthly — leakage is the silent killer of facility budgets in Ghana. Catching a 10% loss takes 5 minutes; ignoring it for a year costs you a generator's worth of fuel.
  • Talk to your CautaReside operator about smart-meter integration if you have lots of sub-meters — manual reads are tedious; some modern meters push readings automatically over LoRaWAN or 4G.

Process flows

End-to-end procedures the utilities team runs day-to-day. Steps are anchored to the actual UI labels.

Capture a meter reading

Manual reading (most common in Ghana):

  1. Utilities → pick the meter (filter by Water / Power / Gas / Other).
  2. + Reading → enter the reading + photograph the meter face (required when difference vs last reading exceeds the configured anomaly threshold).
  3. Save — system computes consumption (this reading − previous reading) + cost (consumption × per-unit rate from the active utility-rate row).

Bulk import (when a meter-reader walks the estate):

  1. Utilities → Import readings → upload the CSV (template downloadable from the same screen).
  2. The system validates: each row maps to a known meter, reading is monotonically non-decreasing, anomaly threshold check.
  3. Validation errors land in a Review queue per row — fix or skip; valid rows stage automatically.
  4. Apply staged readings — readings post in one transaction; per-meter consumption + cost computed.

Generate utility bills for a cycle

  1. Utilities → Cycle tab → pick the cycle (default: current month).
  2. The cycle shows: total consumption per meter, cost per meter, allocated to which unit (per the meter-to-unit map).
  3. Review variances — meters with >20% deviation vs last cycle are highlighted; click to inspect (could be legitimate seasonal change or a leak / faulty meter).
  4. Generate bills — creates a billing charge per unit on the line Utilities — \<meter type>. Posts immediately to each unit's account; residents see it on their next statement.
  5. Common-area utilities (lobby lights, lift, water pump) post against the facility's operating account, not residents.

Log a utility-supply incident

When ECG cuts power, water trucks haven't arrived, gas supply is interrupted.

  1. Utilities → + Incident.
  2. Pick the affected utility + start time + cause (Vendor outage / Maintenance / Equipment failure / Other).
  3. The system suggests a Broadcast announcement to the affected residents (typically all when it's estate-wide); mgmt can edit the draft before sending.
  4. When supply restores, Close incident with the end timestamp. Total downtime + impacted residents land on the unit's utility- reliability profile.

Reconcile vendor bills

When the ECG / Ghana Water bill arrives.

  1. Utilities → Vendor bills → + Add bill.
  2. Capture vendor + period + total + due date. Photograph the bill PDF.
  3. The system reconciles vendor total vs the sum of consumption- based pass-throughs you billed residents in the same period.
  4. Variances surface on the Reconciliation tab — could be common- area share that wasn't allocated, a meter that's reading low (sub-meter under-reads → tariff difference), or a vendor billing error worth disputing.
  5. Once aligned, Mark vendor bill paid — posts to the operating account; the variance line (if any) is logged for the facility's monthly P&L review.