Zero Friction helps heat suppliers, building managers, and service providers with customer service and billing for their end customers. We've developed an easy-to-implement cloud solution that supports your daily administration and provides advanced insights. 🚀

This section will provide you with some useful insights into Zero Friction's key data groups. These data groups, which we'll call entities, are essentially the foundation upon which Zero Friction rests. Each entity has several underlying characteristics, which will be briefly explained.

We have identified the following entities:

We'll delve deeper into each component to give you all the information you need.

Let's start by introducing the first entity, because before we talk about meters and consumption, we need to take a step back and ask ourselves: where is the meter located? At what address? The answer is a (service) location and location groups.
A service location is one of the most important entities in Zero Friction because it is the physical address where you provide one or more services (you could call them utilities) to your end customer.

A location group is a collection of service locations that are related because they are located in the same building or are part of a single project with similar billing needs. By grouping service locations, you can create a product with billing items per property group. This product is applied to all locations within a group by default, with the same billing date.

Billing details can be specified for each location group, including a different Bank account and sort code, logo, colors used on billing documents, contact details, and billing standards (such as advance and invoice frequency, payment terms, product, and invoice date).

When invoices are created for a contract of a service location that belongs to a location group, the location group settings are taken into account when generating the invoices for that location.

To conclude this section, we would like to introduce two more concepts related to the entities mentioned earlier: custom entity properties and move motion.

Zero Friction allows users to define their own custom entity properties for customer, service location, contract, meter, and location group using custom entity properties. These properties can be used for billing purposes or to store additional information that Zero Friction doesn't track by default (you might call them custom fields if you use a CRM or other software).

A move is a request received from customers who apply for a new contract or terminate their existing contract through the customer portal. This option is only available if your plan supports the "customer portal" feature.

Now that we've explained the "where," we need to discuss the "what" and the "who." Let's introduce the following two entities: meters, consumption, and the customer.

One of the foundations of Zero Friction is receiving measurements from various measuring devices. We support meters from various brands and enable connections to both individual meters (meters at a service location) and shared meters (meters in groups of locations).

These measurements—collected regularly—are then transferred and converted into consumption (the difference between two measurements) spread over the period between those two measurements. For example, if one measurement is taken per month, consumption is evenly distributed across all days in that month.

In practice: a service location can provide hot water, heat, water, electricity, gas, and other services. This means there's a single service location with multiple services, and a contract that links the customer and their product (with specific rates and billing items) to the service location. We'll explain the various entities involved in this process later, but this is a good example to start with.

Let's move on to the next entities, specifically the customers:
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A customer is a person or organization that has one or more contracts with a specific organization. This entity is important because it tells you what type of person resides at that specific address. Zero Friction allows you to add as much information as possible about your customer. In addition to standard fields for contact and bank details, you can also add custom fields if you're missing something. You can also apply different VAT rates (private or business customers) and indicate whether a customer is eligible for a social tariff.

Already have Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software? No worries, Zero Friction can connect to it.

💡 To learn more about this, you can contact us via [email protected] or via the chat function.

We've discussed the entities "consumption" and "meters," and we know they're connected to a "customer" living at a specific "location" (address). In the next step, we'll look at how these entities are connected, namely via a "contract." ⬇️

A contract is a legally binding agreement that outlines the terms of a business relationship between a customer and the service location. To invoice your end customer, you not only need to know which address is being served by which customer, but you also need to know the applicable pricing terms.

At Zero Friction, we work with "products" that easily group specific invoice items. Each product contains invoice items: these can be fixed costs with a fixed price or variable costs that depend on consumption. The total invoice amount is the sum of all invoice items. Grouping invoice items into a product simplifies work, as a product can be used for multiple contracts that follow a specific billing plan. Products can easily be updated with new prices and rates for a specific period or year. Updating a product automatically updates all contracts in which it's used, so you don't have to update each contract individually.

Knowing this, you can set up a contract that ends with the invoices being sent to your end customer.

Contracts can be concluded for any number of services provided at a location, but it's also possible for a contract to cover only specific services within the location. For example, a customer might contract for heating services but not for cooling services at a location that offers both.

A contract not only specifies the services provided but also how the customer will be charged for those services. This includes information such as the specific product used, the frequency of the service, and the bank account where the charges will be deposited. By including these details in the contract, both the customer and the service provider can clearly understand what is expected of each party and can prevent any misunderstandings or disputes.

As a reminder, we have meters connected to an address where a person or organization lives, and the end customer has entered into a contract for a certain type of service at a certain frequency that is delivered to the location (or group of locations) served.
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Once the contract is signed, the invoice (or multiple invoices if there is an advance invoice) is generated and the end customer is billed. Invoices are automatically generated by Zero Friction as long as the invoice information is correct. This usually means that meter readings must be available for the start and end dates of the billing period (to calculate actual consumption) and that the rates and prices for that period are configured. Upon arrival at the end date of the billing period (which can be monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually, as defined in the contract), the invoice is ready for approval.

If the system fails to automatically generate invoices due to missing data (e.g., missing meter readings, missing prices/rates, etc.), manual intervention is required to create the invoice. The missing data must be added and the invoice must be generated manually.

Congratulations! Your invoice has been sent, and now it's your customer's turn to pay. But what happens if the invoice isn't collected?

Depending on the payment method type (SCT or SDD), a SEPA mandate can be linked, enabling direct debit requests. IBAN numbers are also used to automatically assign incoming manual transfers to the correct customer. Specifically, we have the following types of bank transactions:

Outgoing bank transaction:

A file containing the transactions requested to the bank. There are two types of bank transactions that Zero Friction can request from the bank:

Incoming bank transaction:
An import of the bank statements for a specific company bank account. These statements show all successful SDDs and refunds, received manual payments, and failed SDDs.

What exactly happens in Zero Friction when a payment is delayed? Our solution supports a collection process for following up on debtors with overdue invoices. A debtor cycle is initiated when an invoice's payment term (due date) has passed. This process can be activated in your organization's configuration settings.

All different communications can be customized in your account settings, from the text on your invoices to the move request to global translations (if you support your end customers with multiple languages).

When all invoices have been paid, the accounts receivable cycle is automatically closed.
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Within the Zero Friction end-user application (or portal), customers gain online insight into their energy consumption, making billing and customer contact as accessible as possible. The online relocation process (called a digital relocation) is simple and smooth, and all information is stored in a secure back-office application.

This feature makes end users more aware of their energy consumption, helping them to comply with the legal European obligation (from 1/1/2022) to provide monthly information on consumption and costs.

Already excited about this essential feature? We understand! The customer portal can also be purchased separately from our invoicing solution. It integrates with your business software using standard APIs.

Finally, the Zero Friction customer portal is positioned as a SaaS solution. This means the portal is hosted and maintained by Zero Friction, but publicly available from the URL of your choice, for example, myenergy.company.com. The end user will experience the customer portal as your own, as it is published in your company's branding. This means the logo and colors are customized for an optimal look and feel for your company.