Our first job-to-be-done release is here! From now on, we bundle features around your processes, rather than launching individual features throughout the year. This major new release helps you get complete meter readings and accurate consumption faster when preparing your billing.
Gaps and anomalies in meter data lead to estimations, delays, disputes and compliance risks.
By improving data completeness and consumption accuracy, we reduce rework during billing cycles, avoid unbilled backlogs, lower compliance risks, and maintain customer trust, while reducing the cost to serve through automation.
With this release, we are focusing on flexibility in submitting meter data, reducing manual steps and error risks, and accelerating the onboarding of new meters and networks.
What you can expect in this release:
🚀 More control over the acceptance period for final meter readings in billing cycles
🚀 Process and bill readings for resetting meters
🚀 Automatically estimated readings at the end date of a billing period
🚀 Meter reading origins
🚀 Import, process and bill consumption
🚀 Remove meters that are not linked
🚀 Additional reading validations
🚀 Integration with Renson OpenMotics
🚀 Integration with EnergyGrip - Aurum
More control over the acceptance period for final meter readings in billing periods
You now have more control over the reading window for the billing period. You can set how many days before and after the last day of the billing period are accepted for the final reading.
Go to Configuration ⚙️ ➡️ Billing ➡️ Preferences to specify the number of days allowed to accept a final reading.
Process and bill readings for resetting meters
We are improving the processing and billing of resetting meters, so that consumption is correctly billed, even when a meter resets to 0.
What’s new?
Reset date per meter channel: support for a reset day/month (and for hourly readings, also an hour).
Better validation of reset readings: a reading of 0 on the reset date is accepted and no longer flagged as "negative consumption".
Adjusted consumption calculation: we never use the reading on the reset date to bill consumption, but always the reading 1 day before (or for hourly readings: 1 hour before).
If a billing period contains multiple reset cycles, we split consumption per reset cycle.
Important to know
If the reset date is configured incorrectly, the reset date must be corrected on the meter model, the meter must be reconfigured, and a draft invoice must be deleted and recreated.
Read the full help article: Meter management – Resetting meters: configure and invoice
Automatically estimated readings at the end date of a billing period
Missing meter readings at the end of a billing period often cause delays in invoicing. This leads to waiting for a reading from the customer or manually creating an estimate before an invoice can be generated.
To enable faster billing while remaining fully transparent to customers, Zero Friction now supports automatic and manual estimates at the end date of a billing period.
Via Configuration ➡️ Invoices ➡️ Preferences, you can activate this feature and set how many days after the end of the period an estimate may be automatically generated.
Invoices that contain estimated consumption are now also clearly identified. Both your team and your customers can immediately see when an estimate has been used.
With this update, you avoid unnecessary billing delays while maintaining full transparency over estimated consumption.
Read the full help article: Estimated measurements
Meter reading origins
When a question arises about consumption or billing, it is important to quickly identify where a meter reading came from.
That is why the origin of meter readings is now clearly displayed within the platform and in customer communications. You can immediately see whether a reading was:
Received through a meter integration (Meter)
Submitted by the customer (Customer)
Entered by a customer service representative (User)
Generated as an estimate (Estimated)
When a reading is entered manually via the platform, the user can also select the correct origin themselves.
This additional transparency enables faster follow-up on customer queries, better data traceability and greater confidence in consumption and billing data.
Read the full help article: Meter readings: origin and how they were captured
Import, process and bill consumption
Some meters record consumption over a period instead of a rising cumulative index. Examples include heat cost allocators (HCA) and other delta meters. Zero Friction now supports the full process for this type of meter: from creation and data entry to processing and billing.
What’s new?
Create delta meter models: when creating a meter model, you set the reading type per channel: cumulative (existing) or delta (new). Mixed meters with both types are also supported. Go to Configuration ➡️ Meters ➡️ Models to create a new meter model.
Manually add consumption: for meters with a channel where the reading type is set to delta, you can manually add consumption via the “Add meter data” window. Enter the start date, end date, and measured value for the period to register the consumption.
Consumption import: in addition to the value and end date, the import file now also includes a start date to allow for consumption import. An import template is available in the import jobs entity.
Billing overview: for consumption meters, you can view the received consumption together with the consumption start and end dates. Multiple consumption periods within a single invoice period are automatically aggregated. Missing consumption periods are flagged, allowing you to complete them in an instant.
Invoice: on the invoice, customers will see under “My consumption” the period during which the consumption was measured, along with the measured consumption. The start reading and end reading fields are left empty, as this type of meter directly measures consumption.
Read the full help article: Meter management – Delta meters: enter, import and bill consumption
Remove meters that are not linked
Made a mistake? Or imported an unnecessary meter?
Meters that you are not using, that are not linked to anything and have no history can now be deleted. This keeps your data well organised.
Zero Friction now makes a clear distinction between uninstalling and deleting a meter. An inactive meter with no history can be deleted using the "Delete meter" button in the action menu.
Additional reading validations
Errors and anomalies in meter data are often only noticed when preparing invoices, or worse, after a customer questions their consumption. Metering validation lets you identify these issues earlier, so you can address them before they affect billing.
What's new?
You can enable the following validations separately:
Consumption out of bounds: flags manually entered readings that deviate significantly from expected consumption (e.g. a typo).
Uncontracted consumption: flags consumption on a service location during a period when that utility was not supplied.
Zero consumption: flags meters that report no or near-zero consumption for an extended period, even though usage is expected.
Missing meter reset: flags when a reset reading was expected but not received.
Incorrect meter reset measurement value: flags a reset reading that is present, but not equal to 0.
Measurement frequency too low: flags hourly and daily channels that stop sending data within the expected interval.
Overlapping consumption: flags consumption periods that overlap on the same channel.
Consumption gap: flags missing periods between consecutive consumption periods.
Negative consumption (already available): flags measurements that result in negative consumption.
When a validation detects a problem, a metering issue is automatically created. You handle these issues through your usual workflow: resolve, ignore, or, if a meter repeatedly triggers the same type of issue, temporarily mute it with a muting rule per meter, issue type and period.
⚠️ Metering validation is off by default. Enable the feature and individual validations via Configuration ⚙️ ➡️ Meter ➡️ Preferences ➡️ Metering validation. If you don't see this option, contact your CSM.
Read the full help article: Metering validation: detecting meter data issues before billing
Integration with Renson
Zero Friction can now retrieve meter data directly from Renson. For this type of metering, you no longer need to manually import a CSV file. This enables efficient transfer of meter data and, as a result, more automated billing.
Go to Configuration ⚙️ ➡️ Integrations
Click the Renson integration card to connect.
Integration with EnergyGrip - Aurum
Zero Friction can now retrieve meter data directly from Aurum's EnergyGrip energy management system. For this type of metering, you no longer need to import a CSV file. This enables efficient transfer of meter data and, as a result, more automated billing.
Would you like to connect to Aurum’s EnergyGrip?
Go to Configuration ⚙️ ➡️ Integrations
Click the EnergyGrip integration card to connect.
Import CSV files with column format
Zero Friction now also supports importing column-based CSV files. This is useful when you import meter data from building management software or other tools that export meter values as a time-series matrix.
To import column-format CSVs, go to Configuration ⚙️ ➡️ Jobs ➡️ File formats. When adding a new file format, you can now select “CSV column” as the format.