Associating Consumers

A Consumer is an organisation or individual responsible for paying the utilities at a Site or Unit. A Consumer is normally the tenant or occupier of the Site or Unit. When a Consumer is associated with one or more Sites or Units, that Consumer should be registered only once. Consumers are either registered in the Portfolio Module or automatically registered during the Upload Process.

A Consumer must have a name, which does not need to be unique.
Even though only a name is necessary, it is advised that other Consumer attributes are included:
- Trading Name
- VAT
- E-mail address
- ID or Company Registration
- Reference
A Consumer can be linked to a 3rd party system such as a property management system using the Reference attribute.
More than one Consumer can be associated with a Site or Unit.
A Site or Unit does not have to have an associated Consumer.

Proportion

The general rule is that where a Unit is associated with one or more Consumers then the total attributable billing proportion is 100 %.

In the case where there is more than one Consumer associated with a Site or Unit, the default is to proportion the consumption equally amongst the Consumers.

The default attributable billing proportion can always be overridden.

The only exception to the 100% allocation of the attributable billing proportion is in the case where Consumers are associated with a Common Area Unit. In this case, the total billable allocation can be less than or more than 100%.

See Consumer App.