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.

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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

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How it works

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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.

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Remaining bill cost

Nectar subtracts directly assigned charges from the bill’s net current charges. 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. 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

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No-usage fallback

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

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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

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Account-level charges

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

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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behaves differently: each bill retains the meters and sites it originally covered, including usage rows later marked as superseded.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.

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Currencies

Bill detail and audit views show the bill’s native currency. Portfolio and cross-bill cost analytics normalize values to USD so totals do not add incompatible currencies.

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Good to know

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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.

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Demand charges

Demand charges (based on peak electricity usage in kW) are allocated specifically to demand meters, not spread across all electricity meters.

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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.

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Next steps