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Meter reads & billing
Two different things live under Billing: the Volume report, which is how you bill your customers on meter reads, and Subscription, which is how MeterBeam bills you.
Volume report
Pick a site (or all sites), a start date, and an end date, and click Run. For every device you get the meter reading at the start and end of the period and the difference — total, black, and color — plus a monthly average so odd-length periods are comparable.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Start / End | The lifetime meter at the first and last reading inside the period. If a device had no reading on the exact boundary date, the nearest reading inside the range is used. |
| Total Δ / Black Δ / Color Δ | End minus start. This is the billable click count for the period. |
| Avg/mo (B, C) | The delta normalized to a 30-day month. |
Export CSV gives you the same table for import into your billing system, spreadsheet, or accounting package; Print produces a clean page to attach to an invoice. Because every poll is stored, you can re-run a report for any historical period — including after a device was retired.
Quarterly contracts: run the report for the quarter on the 1st, export the CSV, and you have every customer's clicks in one pass. A device that was replaced mid-period shows as two rows (old serial retired, new serial active), which is exactly what you want on the invoice.
Where the numbers come from
Meters are read straight from the device's SNMP counters at every poll and stored with a timestamp. MeterBeam never estimates or interpolates a meter; if a device was offline for a week, the report uses the last real reading before the gap and the first one after. Click any device for its reading history if a customer questions a number.
Your MeterBeam subscription
The top of the page shows your plan, its base fee and included devices, the per-device overage rate, this month's peak device count, and account status. MeterBeam bills monthly in arrears: on the 1st you're charged for the previous month — base fee plus overage for any devices above your plan's included count, measured at the highest device count seen that month. Your first charge covers only the days since billing started, after any free trial.
- Unmonitored and retired devices are never counted. Cleaning up the device list at a site directly reduces your bill.
- Manage billing opens the payment portal to update a card, change plan, or download invoices. If there's no billing account on file yet (trial accounts), contact billing@meterbeam.com to set one up.
- Plans and current founding-partner pricing are on the pricing page.