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Need help in this area? See Data Inventory FAQ.
Usage data is the heart of what Nectar collects — the actual consumption numbers from your utility bills. Each usage data record answers a simple question: how much of a resource did a specific meter use during a specific period, and what did it cost? See also: Glossary — Usage data for the term definition.

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What a usage data record contains

Here is a concrete example. One usage data record might say:
Meter #A12345 at 123 Main Street used 5,200 kWh of electricity from January 1 through January 31, 2024, at a cost of $780.00.
Every usage data record includes these key fields:

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Tenant usage vs raw usage

In most cases, tenant usage and raw usage are the same number. The distinction only matters when you occupy a shared building. When it matters: Imagine you lease 40% of a 10-story office building. The whole building’s electricity meter reads 10,000 kWh for the month. But you only want to report your share. Tenant usage is the number that appears in your analytics, exports, and carbon reports. If your site does not have an occupancy percentage set, or if the occupancy setting is off, tenant usage equals raw usage. To configure occupancy for your site, see Occupancy adjustment. For the connection-level checkbox, see Connections — Multiply by occupancy.

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Estimated usage data

If Nectar could not extract exact numbers from a bill — maybe the PDF was blurry or the bill format was unusual — you can enter the usage data manually and mark it as estimated. Estimated records work just like regular records in analytics and exports, but the estimated flag lets anyone looking at the data know the values are approximations. This is also useful for filling in gaps. If you know a building used approximately 4,500 kWh in March but the bill hasn’t arrived yet, you can create an estimated record to keep your reports complete. When the real bill comes in, replace the estimate with the actual number. See Glossary — Estimated data for the definition.

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Commodity-specific fields

Different utility types have additional fields specific to their commodity. These are filled in automatically when Nectar processes a bill. For definitions of electricity demand, time-of-use tiers, net metering, gas types, water types, waste streams, fuel types, and more, see the Glossary — Commodities and Energy Types section.

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Additional data fields

Some usage data records include extra metadata that does not fit into the standard fields above. These are stored as additional data fields — free-form key-value pairs attached to a usage record. Common examples include:
  • Process type — the operational process the meter serves (e.g., “Bldg Heat,” “Powder Coat,” “Heat Treat”)
  • Department or cost center — which part of the organization the usage belongs to
  • Sub-meter classification — any custom label parsed from the utility bill
Additional data fields appear in the expanded usage detail panel when present. You can add, edit, or remove them in the Additional data fields section at the bottom of the usage data edit form.

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Emissions data

Each usage data record can have associated emissions information — CO₂e totals, emission factors, and emissions methodology notes. For definitions and context, see Glossary — Carbon and Emissions Reporting.

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How edits affect your reports

When you edit a usage data record, the changes show up across the platform immediately:
Changes take effect immediately in analytics and future exports. Exports you have already downloaded are not updated retroactively — they reflect the data as it was at the time you exported. If you need a corrected export, run the export again after making your edits.

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FAQ

There are several common causes. The bill PDF may have been hard to read, leading to incorrect extraction — compare the usage data against the original bill. The meter’s identifiers might be wrong, causing data from a different meter to appear here. Or the occupancy adjustment might be applied unexpectedly (or not applied when it should be). Start by opening the bill and comparing the extracted data to the source document.
Raw usage is the full consumption amount on the bill — the total for the whole building or meter. Tenant usage is your share of that total, adjusted by your occupancy percentage. If you occupy 100% of the building (or no occupancy percentage is set), the two numbers are identical. The difference only matters for shared or multi-tenant buildings.
Open the bill that contains the usage data and navigate to the Usage tab. You can edit the consumption value, cost, service dates, and other fields directly. Your changes take effect immediately in analytics. If the entire record is wrong, you can exclude it and create a new manual entry with the correct values from Data Input > Manual Entry.
Yes. You can add usage data manually through the bill detail page (Usage tab > Add usage data) or through the manual data entry flow in Data Input > Manual Entry. Manually entered data works exactly like automatically extracted data in analytics, exports, and carbon calculations.
No. Exports that have already been downloaded reflect the data as it was at the time of export. If you edit usage data after exporting, the old export file will not change. To get an export with the corrected data, run the export again.