Managers of multi-tenant buildings can lose three days a month splitting utility invoices across units in spreadsheets. OCR capture, per-unit splitting by formula or submeter, and automatic invoicing and reconciliation typically shrink the whole rebilling run to twenty minutes.
Typical results
99%
Utility cost recovered
-92%
Billing disputes
0
Invoices retyped
Figures reflect typical results for this kind of automation.
The challenge
Every month brought a stack of electricity, water, and gas invoices in different formats, each needing to be split across dozens of units by floor area, occupancy, or submeter reading. Three days of spreadsheet work produced tenant bills riddled with copy-paste errors, a dozen disputes a month, and utility costs that quietly went unrecovered.
Before and after
Rebilling cycle
−99%Billing disputes
−92%Utility cost recovered
+13%The automation
Supplier invoices now land in a monitored inbox where OCR extracts amounts, billing periods, and meter identifiers from any format. Each cost is split per unit according to the building's rules — fixed formula, floor area, or actual submeter readings — and tenant invoices generate automatically with the calculation attached, so every charge is explainable. Issued invoices are tracked, incoming payments reconcile against them automatically, and only exceptions ever reach a human.
How it works
- 01
Invoice arrives
Electricity, water, and gas invoices land by email and are captured the moment they arrive.
- 02
OCR extract
Amounts, billing periods, and meter identifiers are read from every supplier format.
- 03
Split per unit
Each cost is divided by fixed formula, floor area, or submeter reading, per the building's rules.
- 04
Invoices out
Tenant invoices generate and issue automatically, with the underlying calculation attached.
- 05
Reconcile
Incoming payments match against invoices automatically; only exceptions reach a human.
Starts from
- Supplier utility invoices
- Submeter readings
Delivers
- Tenant invoices issued
- Payments tracked
- Auto-reconciled
The impact
The monthly rebilling run typically shrinks from three days to twenty minutes, and billing disputes fall from about twelve a month to one. Utility cost recovery climbs from around eighty-eight to ninety-nine percent because nothing slips through the split, and the bookkeeper closes the month on time.
Questions about this automation
How are utility costs split between units?
Each building has its own split rules: a fixed formula, floor area or actual submeter readings. After OCR reads the amounts, billing periods and meter identifiers from the supplier invoice, the engine applies those rules per unit and attaches the calculation to each tenant invoice, so every charge can be explained.
Which supplier invoice formats does it handle?
Electricity, water and gas invoices arrive in a monitored inbox in whatever format each supplier uses. OCR extracts the fields the split needs, and a new supplier layout is mapped once when it first appears. Invoices that cannot be read cleanly go to the bookkeeper for a quick check.
How are tenant payments reconciled?
Issued invoices are tracked, and incoming payments are matched against them automatically by amount and reference. Only exceptions, such as partial payments or unmatched transfers, reach a person. This is a multi-step build, usually rolled out in stages, starting with invoice capture and splitting and adding reconciliation after.