MOL · capability 06 of 08
Prepayment for tariffs a token meter cannot apply.
STS (Standard Transfer Specification) prepayment is built on a single rate, a token and a credit balance. It cannot represent time-of-use pricing, a maximum demand charge, a share of common-area consumption, or water and electricity on one balance. Commercial landlords who want prepayment are therefore usually told it cannot be done.
Prepayment runs on the MOL billing engine.
MOL prepayment uses the same billing engine that produces the credit invoices, run daily against a balance instead of monthly against an account. It can therefore price anything the billing engine can price.
This includes time of use, maximum demand, seasonal rates, network charges, a pro-rata share of common area, and electricity, water and gas on a single balance. Because it bills from half-hourly interval data, consumption is costed for the half hour in which it occurred, not averaged across the month.
What happens as a balance runs down
Disconnection is the last step in a sequence designed to avoid it, and every stage is recorded.
01
Daily
Yesterday's readings are collected, costed on the tenant's tariff and deducted from the balance. All of the tenant's metering points are combined in one account.
02
Low balance
When the balance falls below a set minimum, MOL sends an SMS and an email. No action is taken on the supply at this stage.
03
Below zero
The account moves to notified disconnect. Up to three further warnings are sent, each stating the minimum amount payable to prevent disconnection.
04
No payment
MOL instructs the meter to disconnect through the head end, the account moves to disconnected, and the tenant is notified.
No tenant is disconnected without warning, and the landlord can show when each notice was sent and what the balance was at the time. That record keeps credit control a straightforward process rather than a dispute.
For owners who buy in bulk and recover the cost from tenants.
MOL prepayment is for office blocks, shopping centres and mixed-use developments where the owner takes a bulk supply from the utility and recovers the cost from tenants. Prepayment moves that recovery from thirty days after consumption to the day of consumption.
It works with the smart meters already installed. The meters are read by MOL's acquisition layer and processed by the same MDMS (meter data management system) as all other data, so a tenant's prepaid balance and the landlord's utility invoice are derived from the same validated readings.
See this applied to your own data.
PMT will run it against a month of your readings and show you the results.