Apportioning Common Area Water
sdg.marinusvz
2013-07-03 03:36
Hi Marinus
Thanks for your help earlier. To summarise, each tenant has their own water meter and is also allocated a proportional share of the common area water usage. The proportion is based on area occupied against total area available.
I have created a virtual water meter and a meter account for each physical meter.
What I would like to do is create a single common area water meter that I can add to each meter account using the ?Add more meters?? button, then apportion the water usage for only that meter using the ?Area of Premise? field. So the tenant ends up with the full allocation for their own water meter but only a proportional allocation for the common area water meter. I could use the ?Portion? field to do this for each meter, but then if a unit becomes unoccupied the proportion of common area water usage changes for each tenant. By calculating the portion based on premise area, if the unit ever becomes vacant I can just tick the ?Meter Account disabled? box and the water allocation would be automatically updated. However it appears that calculating a portion according to the premise?s area applies to all meters attached to the account?
An alternative would be to create the common area water meter as a summation meter, then attach new meter accounts for each tenant to this common water meter. I should then be able to calculate the portions based on area of premises and add the charges for each meter account together to get a total charge for each tenant.
Am I on the right track with either of these methods or is there an easier way that I?m not seeing?
Many thanks
sdg.marinusvz
2013-07-03 03:37
Hi Marinus
Thanks for your help earlier. To summarise, each tenant has their own water meter and is also allocated a proportional share of the common area water usage. The proportion is based on area occupied against total area available.
I have created a virtual water meter and a meter account for each physical meter.
What I would like to do is create a single common area water meter that I can add to each meter account using the “Add more meters…” button, then apportion the water usage for only that meter using the “Area of Premise” field. So the tenant ends up with the full allocation for their own water meter but only a proportional allocation for the common area water meter. I could use the “Portion” field to do this for each meter, but then if a unit becomes unoccupied the proportion of common area water usage changes for each tenant. By calculating the portion based on premise area, if the unit ever becomes vacant I can just tick the “Meter Account disabled” box and the water allocation would be automatically updated.
Yes, that is exactly right.
This should not be a problem, since the tenant's own meter is only in his own account.
It only takes the meter accounts into account that has the checkbox ticked, so you can have that meter in any number of summation etc. meter accounts without the checkbox ticked, and it won't affect the apportioning in the tenant's own meter account, it would still be 100%.
The apportioning is according to the meter accounts in which a specific meter is found, that also has that checkbox ticked, and for the same engineering unit (e.g. m2 - you can change this by clicking it btw).
An alternative would be to create the common area water meter as a summation meter, then attach new meter accounts for each tenant to this common water meter. I should then be able to calculate the portions based on area of premises and add the charges for each meter account together to get a total charge for each tenant.
Am I on the right track with either of these methods or is there an easier way that I’m not seeing?
Well, I'd create a summation meter for the common areas anyway, and just add that to the water of all the tenants, and tick the box for apportioning on the tenants and supply the m2.