We know that knowing your exact electricity consumption in your business, premises, industrial buildings or tourist apartments is important to determine what you spend at home, in your business, or what your tenants spend (if they are short or medium stay). And being able to know him daily or over a specific period of time is also a challenge. This process involves the accurate measurement of electricity consumption using the meters installed on your property, or by looking directly at the bills you receive. However, this process can be confusing.

🖇️ Let's differentiate actual reading and estimated reading

Both refer to measuring the amount of electricity your home or business uses over a given period of time, but they are completely different.

• The real reading it is obtained directly from the electricity meter installed at the consumer's location, and it appears on your bill. The meters record the exact amount of electricity consumed in kilowatt-hours (kWh). If you want to know the consumption of a period, you can obtain it by visiting the location of your meter (which is sometimes difficult or impossible to access) periodically in the time periods you need and doing the corresponding calculations. But it requires perseverance and a great dedication of your time.

Another way to know your real consumption, but in the period you need, would be to askAsk the distributor in your area for information if you have a smart meter. But to do this, you have to contact the marketer, who is who you have the contact with. This has to ask the distributor for your consumption data, which is the one that has all your information, it's a complex process.

• The estimated reading you receive them on your bill and are issued when you don't have a smart meter, or when the retailer has not been able to retrieve your real readings from the distributor. In this case, electric companies may choose to send you estimated readings, based on the user's historical consumption during previous similar periods. Electricity companies apply algorithms and models to forecast consumption instead of obtaining an actual reading, and may have errors in the estimation.

📝 Actual Reading, new functionality for Polaroo customers

We want to provide a solution to these processes so that you can know your daily consumption with Polaroo, and with the Real Reading tool we have succeeded. With it, you can know how much electricity you consume, real -without estimates-, for the period of time you need and for the supply point from which you need the data. All you have to do is access your platform, click on the left sidebar to the “Actual Reading” section, indicate the period and your asset, and click on “extract readings”:

⚙️ Who is this tool useful for?

Polaroo's Real Reading tool It is useful for any company, I want to know what you consume on a daily basis or for certain periods of time. Even those who are faced with monthly consumption estimates for not having a smart meter and constant misinformation about what they pay. In the platform you will have access to if you sign up for our service, in the “Real Reading” section, you can indicate the property or properties that you have registered.

👩🏻 ‍ 💼🧑🏻 ‍ 💼 Do you rent properties for short or medium term stays?

If in your case you are interested in this service because you are the owner or manager of tourist apartments or coliving apartments, it would also be of great help.

These are the tools that Polaroo offers you if you manage tourist accommodation medium-stay rentals.

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Polaroo Calculator

With half-stay tenants, the tenant's term is longer than the length of a bill. Therefore, during this period, you have to analyse several bills to be able to see their consumption and to apportion them. This will help you understand their consumption. This process can take quite a while, but with our calculator you have at your fingertips in a single click all the consumption by periods, properties, supply and tenant or tenants broken down. We leave you a video summary of how to use the Polaroo software calculator and an image showing the tool:

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Actual Polaroo Reading‍

Pero For short-term tenants, apportioning an invoice is not correct, because within the period of a one-month bill there may have been five different tenants, and their consumption may have been very different.

If a short-term tenant leaves the air conditioner all day and doesn't use it the next time they enter, all the consumption would appear in the same period of a bill, and Prorating it is not representative. In the tourism sector, apportioning bills doesn't work. In these cases, Actual meter reading is the only option.

With our tool, you can indicate the date of arrival of the tenant and the date of departure, and our service automatically offers you the reading of the electricity meters. In this way, as a manager or owner of a tourist rental you will have enormous time savings, being able to obtain the precise calculation. In addition, you can charge your tenants for what they have actually consumed, if you so agree in your lease agreements.

You can even set a limit, for example, if you read the meter every day in our tool, and you see that a tenant has spent more than €100 in consumption after three days, You can tell him that you have reached the limit, and that from that amount he will be charged for the excess.

Both tools are useful whether it is to know the consumption of your tenants, your business or your premises. But thanks to Polaroo's “Real Reading” tool, you can know exactly what expense you generate or, if you have homes for tourist use or short term stays, that of your tenants.

👩🏻 ‍ 💻 Your Polaroo manager helps you

At Polaroo, we will always want to help you pay for exactly what you consume, and if you can optimize your rates, even better. We are supporters of all technological innovations in the sector, and we believe that implementing tools such as Real Reading is very useful for any electricity consumer. Our job is also to inform you about any changes or questions you may have about these implementations, so don't hesitate to ask us!

If you want to know more about us and about the advantages of a service that saves companies time and money in managing basic supplies, you can consult the webpage.