Quick start
This is the whole setup, end to end. Most people are looking at live meter reads within 15 minutes of receiving their login.
1. Log in to the portal
Your account is created when your trial starts. You'll get an email from alerts@meterbeam.com with a setup link — click it, choose a password (8 characters minimum), and sign in at app.meterbeam.com.
Didn't get the email? Check spam for alerts@meterbeam.com and whitelist it — this is also the address your toner and service alerts will come from. Use Forgot password? on the sign-in page to resend a setup link.
2. Create your first site
A site is one physical location with its own network — one customer office, one branch, one building. Each site gets its own collector. Go to Sites → Add site, type a name (we suggest Customer — Location, like "Lakeshore Dental — Downtown"), and press Add site.
Click the new site to open it. You can fill in address, contact, phone, and email now or later — the only thing the collector needs is the site to exist.
3. Install the collector
On the site page, under Collector agents, click Download site installer (MSI). The installer is pre-bound to this site — there is nothing to type during setup, and no enrollment code to copy around.
Run it on any always-on Windows machine on that site's network: a server, a workstation that stays powered on, or a small NUC. It installs as a Windows service named MeterBeamAgent, starts automatically, and survives reboots. Full detail, Linux instructions, and firewall requirements are in Install the collector.
Installing at a customer's office? Use Customer download link… instead. It creates a time-limited link you can email to their IT contact so they can run the installer themselves, without a portal login.
4. Watch devices appear
Within a minute or two of the service starting, the site's collector row flips to LIVE and shows the machine's hostname. The collector then scans the local subnet(s) for anything that answers SNMP as a printer, and the Devices table starts filling in with make, model, serial, location, meter totals, and toner levels.
A first full scan of a typical office takes under a minute. If a device you expected is missing, see Device discovery & troubleshooting — nine times out of ten it's SNMP disabled on the printer or a device on a different VLAN.
5. Turn on notifications
Go to Settings → Notifications, enable Email, enter who should receive alerts, and click Send test alert. That's it — toner-low, offline, and service alerts will start arriving based on the default thresholds (toner 15%, waste 10%, offline after 24 hours). You can tune all of that later; see Users, notifications & settings.
What happens next
- MeterBeam polls every device roughly hourly and keeps the full reading history.
- After a few days of readings it has enough burn-rate data to forecast days left per cartridge, which drives the Supplies view.
- Meter deltas roll up into the Volume report for billing, with CSV export.