Cost allocation

Many utility bills cover multiple meters or service points on a single invoice. Nectar preserves directly linked charges, then allocates the remaining net cost across the bill’s meters and sites.

---

​

When cost allocation is needed

Cost allocation applies when:

• A bill covers multiple meters — for example, one invoice for three electricity meters
• A bill covers different utilities — for example, combined electric and gas billing
• Account-level charges — charges like “customer fees” that aren’t tied to a specific meter

---

​

How it works

​

Directly linked charges

When a line item is linked only to meters at one site, Nectar assigns it directly to that site. If it links to multiple meters at that site, Nectar splits it by their relative usage.

​

Demand charges

Demand charges are electricity costs. Nectar assigns them to electricity usage on the bill, split by relative usage. A demand line linked to electricity meters at one site uses the direct path. Unlinked, multi-site, or gas-linked demand still stays on electricity — it is not split with gas or water. If the bill has no electricity usage, the demand charge stays in the remaining bill cost.

​

Remaining bill cost

Nectar subtracts directly assigned charges and demand charges assigned to electricity from the bill’s net current charges. By default the remainder is split equally across utility types with positive usage, then by relative usage within each utility type. This avoids comparing unlike units such as kWh and therms. On accounts with Isolate unallocated / shared charges enabled (from Data Inventory → Accounts), that remainder is not spread across meters. It is kept as a single Unallocated / shared bucket on the bill, so per-meter cost stays at directly assigned charges plus demand charges assigned to electricity. The bucket still counts in the bill total, in site cost, and in account cost — only per-meter cost excludes it, so meters on an isolate account do not sum to their site. Interest is unaffected and is still spread across meters. Default example: A $1,000 electricity remainder covers two meters:

• Meter A used 6,000 kWh (60% of total)
• Meter B used 4,000 kWh (40% of total)

Result:

• Meter A is allocated $600
• Meter B is allocated $400

Isolate example: The same bill with isolate enabled keeps the $1,000 remainder in Unallocated / shared. Meter rows keep only directly assigned charges and demand charges assigned to electricity. Combined-bill example: A $1,000 electric + gas invoice has a$200 demand charge and equal usage on each meter. The $200 stays on electricity. The remaining$800 splits equally across the two utility types ($400 each), so electricity is allocated$600 and gas $400. With isolate enabled, that$800 remainder stays in Unallocated / shared instead.

​

No-usage fallback

If none of the bill’s meters has positive usage, Nectar divides the remainder equally across the eligible usage rows.

---

​

How a bill is split across meters

Two different questions get asked about cost, and Nectar answers them separately:

1. How is this bill’s money divided? Every usage row on the bill takes part — including rows on meters you’ve marked as not tracked and rows on bills with an open data quality issue. The split reflects what the utility actually billed.
2. Whose money counts toward a total? Portfolio, site, account, and meter totals count only tracked meters on bills without open issues. Untracked meters and unresolved bills are left out of the total.

The two answers are independent. A meter can hold a share of a bill’s cost that it never contributes to a rollup — you’ll see that figure on the meter’s row, and it simply isn’t added into the chart above it. If you want an untracked meter’s spend counted in your totals, mark the meter as tracked; nothing else needs to change.

---

​

Seeing the allocation

To see how a bill’s charges reached a calendar month: To inspect raw line-item links on a bill (not the calendarized allocation):

1. Go to Data Inventory → Bills
2. Open a bill’s detail view
3. Look at the Line Items section to see charges and their meter assignments

Related docs: Bills overview, Bill detail, Sites overview

---

​

Account-level charges

Some charges on a bill aren’t tied to specific meters:

---

​

Revised bills

Corrected usage replaces earlier usage in consumption, emissions, completeness, and usage exports. Cost attribution behaves differently: each bill retains the meters and sites it originally covered, including usage rows later marked as superseded. This prevents a partial correction from moving the original bill’s charges onto unrelated sites. Original and correcting bills each retain their recorded net charges. A revision link does not cancel money by itself. Credits or adjustments recorded on the bills determine the combined spend. Cost-per-unit charts divide those monetary records by authoritative usage from the correcting bill. This produces the all-in effective rate on record; a missing reversal credit can therefore appear as a real rate spike until the bill charges are corrected.

​

Currencies

Bill detail and audit views show each bill in its own currency. Totals, charts, and rankings that combine bills are converted to the Currency in your display preferences, or USD when none is set, so they never add incompatible currencies. Conversions use monthly average exchange rates from Frankfurter, an open-source service that publishes reference rates from the European Central Bank and other central banks. Each bill converts at the average rate for the month of its bill date, including cost spread across months of service (the Analysis date basis). Currencies pegged to the US dollar, such as the UAE dirham and the Saudi riyal, use their fixed peg rate. A bill in a currency with no published rate is left out of converted totals, and the page shows how many bills were not included.

---

​

Good to know

​

Net current charges vs. total charges

Nectar uses net current charges (total charges − prior-period open balance) for allocation and cost analytics. This avoids counting a carried balance again as current-period spend.

​

Bills with open issues

A bill with an unresolved data quality issue is still allocated, and each of its rows still shows an allocated cost — marked with a dotted underline to indicate the figure isn’t counted in analytics yet. Resolving the issue brings it into your totals without changing the allocation itself. See When is data excluded?.

​

Demand charges

Demand charges stay with electricity usage on the bill. They are not assigned to a separate demand meter, and they are not split with gas or water on a combined invoice.

​

You can adjust allocations

If automatic allocation doesn’t match your needs, you can manually assign line items to specific meters in the bill detail view.

---

​

Next steps