Built for owners and operators managing utility bills across multiple commercial properties — office, retail, industrial, and mixed-use portfolios.
Utility bill management gets messy fast in commercial real estate.
It isn't the volume of bills. It's that the portfolio keeps moving underneath them — properties trade, tenants turn over, meters serve more than one party, and the record has to survive all of it.
Properties change hands
Acquisitions and dispositions scatter the record. MeterID tracks the account through the change of ownership — the old account and name, the new one, the transition date, and the tax ID on each — so your team can separate pre- and post-cutover activity instead of reconstructing it later.
Meters don't map neatly to tenants
House meters, direct-metered suites, common areas, vacant space, and tenant-specific service all coexist in one building. The relationship between a meter and who pays for it is the thing most systems get wrong.
Every utility works differently
A portfolio of any size spans dozens of providers, each with its own portal, format, and billing cycle. Portal access, paper bills, emailed invoices, and credentials get centralized in one place instead of living across a property management team's inboxes.
A missing bill becomes an AP problem
Vacant-unit accounts and mid-transition properties are exactly where bills quietly stop arriving, and nobody notices until a late notice or a shutoff. Expected bills are tracked whether or not they show up.
Property and accounting teams need different things
Operations needs the exceptions and the context behind them. AP needs consistent, coded, validated output on a predictable cadence. One bill operation has to serve both without either team doing the other's work.
Portal credentials are stored in an encrypted vault and monitored continuously. How we handle credentials
One bill operation across the whole portfolio.
A scoped onboarding to learn your properties, entities, accounts, and meters — then a managed operation that keeps the record current as the portfolio changes.
Collect
Accounts inherited during acquisitions, vacant-space accounts, landlord-controlled service, and common-area meters all get mapped to the right property and entity. Bills come in by portal, email, and paper across every provider in the portfolio.
Validate
Every bill is checked against itself and against the account's history. Property, account, and meter relationships are verified, and overlapping or gapped service periods, duplicate bills across an ownership change, and shared-meter charges get surfaced with the reason they were flagged.
Deliver
Validated data arrives coded to your entity and property structure, in the AP format your accounting team already uses, on the cadence you set. Allocation detail comes with it where applicable.
Every figure shows its work.
Validation runs before anything reaches your accounting team, and the reasoning behind each flag stays attached to the bill.
Cost spike detection
Unusual cost and usage movement is flagged against the account's own history before anything reaches AP.
Allocation reconciliation
Tenant shares, owner-retained amounts, and lease-excluded costs are confirmed to reconcile back to the source bill.
Duplicate detection
Catches the same bill entering twice, including across an ownership change or a provider transition.
Math verification
Line items are checked against stated totals, so an arithmetic error on the utility's side doesn't become an AP entry.
The account history survives the sale.
When a property trades, the utility accounts usually change with it — new account numbers, a new name on the account, a new tax ID, and paperwork that has to reach the utility before billing follows. MeterID keeps that transition on the account's lifecycle record instead of overwriting what came before.
Both sides of the account
The prior account number and name on account stay on the record alongside the new ones, rather than being overwritten when the account changes.
Tax ID on each account
The tax ID tied to each ownership entity is tracked with the account, so bills land against the right entity before and after the transfer.
Transition dates
When the account transitioned, plus the last bill on the prior account and the first on the new one — the window where bills most often go missing.
Paperwork status
Whether change-of-ownership paperwork has been filed with the utility, and when it was confirmed, tracked per account instead of living in an email thread.
A change of ownership is the single most common moment for a bill to go missing. Expected bills keep getting tracked across the cutover on both the old account and the new one.
MeterID records the transition and the status of the filing. It does not determine which owner is responsible for a given service period.
Illustrative record — sample data, not customer data
Account lifecycle — Electric, 123 Main Street
- Prior account
- #4471-22890
- Prior name on account
- Maple Ridge Holdings LLC
- Prior tax ID
- ••-•••4471
- Last bill on prior account
- Mar 13, 2026
- Transition date
- Mar 14, 2026
- New account
- #6620-11045
- New name on account
- Harbor Point Owner LP
- New tax ID
- ••-•••8802
- COO paperwork filed
- Confirmed Mar 21, 2026
- First bill on new account
- Apr 2, 2026
Both accounts stay queryable after the transition, so a question about a pre-close service period doesn't require digging through the prior owner's records.
From utility bill to tenant allocation.
Available as part of MeterID's managed service.
For properties that recover utilities from tenants, MeterID keeps the allocation tied to the original bill and the method used to calculate it. Your team defines the rules; our team applies them against validated bills and returns tenant-level detail you can bill from.
Collect and validate the source bill
The allocation starts from a bill that has already passed validation.
Associate costs with the property and meters
Costs are tied to the property, the applicable meters, and any lease-excluded amounts.
Apply the allocation method
The method your team established is configured in the platform and applied to the validated bill.
Review and approve
Exceptions are surfaced for review, and approvals are recorded against the allocation as part of the processing flow.
Deliver tenant-level detail
Charge detail comes back traceable to the source bill and the method used to calculate it.
Allocation methods
- Direct-metered consumption
- Fixed percentage allocation
- Rentable square footage
- Occupancy-based allocation
- Custom lease-defined rules
Illustrative output — sample data, not customer data
Source bill — Electric, account #12345, 123 Main Street, service period Jun 1–30
- Bill total
- $6,200.00
- Less lease-excluded (landlord equipment)
- −$1,380.00
- Allocable cost
- $4,820.00
| Tenant | Method | Share | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Suite 201 | Rentable sq ft | 24% | $1,156.80 |
| Suite 305 | Rentable sq ft | 20% | $964.00 |
| Suite 410 | Rentable sq ft | 16% | $771.20 |
| Owner-retained — vacant space | — | 40% | $1,928.00 |
| Reconciled to allocable cost | 100% | $4,820.00 | |
Tenant shares don't always total 100%. What has to reconcile is everything together — tenant shares, owner-retained amounts, and lease-excluded costs — back to the source bill.
MeterID applies the allocation rules your team establishes; it does not determine what a tenant's lease permits you to recover.
Allocations are handled as part of a managed engagement. MeterID does not generate or send tenant invoices.
Benchmarking deadlines in your portfolio?
Commercial buildings above the square-footage thresholds in a growing list of cities and states have to report energy and water use annually. The bill data MeterID already collects is the same data those filings run on.
Benchmarking & complianceCommercial real estate questions.
Can MeterID allocate utility costs to tenants?
Yes, as part of a managed engagement. Your team defines the allocation rules; MeterID applies them against validated bills and returns tenant-level detail you can bill from, with the calculation and approval recorded against the allocation. MeterID does not generate or send tenant invoices, and it does not determine what a lease permits you to recover.
What allocation methods does MeterID support?
Direct-metered consumption, fixed percentage allocation, rentable square footage, occupancy-based allocation, and custom rules defined by a lease. Methods are configured per property in the platform. Tenant shares, owner-retained amounts, and lease-excluded costs are reconciled back to the source bill — tenant shares alone will often total less than the full bill, and that is usually correct.
Is MeterID a submetering platform?
No. MeterID works from utility bills — collecting, validating, and organizing them across a portfolio. We don't install or read submeters, and we don't operate a tenant payment portal. Where submeter or direct-meter data already exists, it can inform how costs are allocated.
How does MeterID handle a property that's being acquired or sold?
MeterID tracks the utility account through the change of ownership as part of its lifecycle history. The prior account number, name on account, and tax ID stay on the record alongside the new ones, together with the transition date, the last bill on the old account, the first bill on the new one, and whether change-of-ownership paperwork has been filed with the utility. A transition is where bills most often go missing, so expected bills keep being tracked across the cutover on both accounts. Determining contractual responsibility for a given service period remains the owner's call — MeterID keeps the record clear enough to make it.
Does MeterID track tax IDs across a change of ownership?
Yes. The tax ID tied to each ownership entity is tracked with the utility account, so bills land against the correct entity before and after a transfer. Both the prior and current tax ID stay on the account's lifecycle record rather than the earlier one being overwritten, which matters when a question about a pre-close service period comes up months later.
Know every property has the bills it should.
MeterID handles collection, validation, missing-bill tracking, and AP-ready delivery across your portfolio — with tenant allocation workflows available where you need them.