There are a few different areas you need to address when setting up the software for reading meters and adding charges to the reservations. A brief overview was given in the Setting up your Campground Database section, but here is a more detailed step-by-step guide.
This guide will mention Electric Meters specifically, but the same steps apply to Gas or Water -- just substitute the appropriate field names, rate types, etc. as appropriate.
Data Field Definitions
First you need to make sure the Site fields are enabled, through Data Field Definitions.
1. Go to Maintenance / Data Field Definitions / Site Fields.
2. Locate the 3 fields associated with Electric meters -- Site_Meter_Last, Site_Meter_Date, and Site_Meter_Resv_Link.
3. Change the status to Enabled for all 3 of these sites (click on "Disabled" under Status and select "Enabled").
Meter wrap-around numbers
Second, you need to set the wrap-around number for your meters.
1. Go to Maintenance / Park Setup / Parks.
2. Enter the Meter wrap-around number for Electric meter. This is almost always a 1 followed by the number of digits in the meter (10000 for 5 digits, 100000 for 6 digits, etc.)
In the simplest case, all meters will wrap at the same number, e.g. 10000 if it's a 4-digit meter. However you might have more than one type of meter with different numbers of digits. If that's the case, you will need to duplicate your Park record so your sites can be divided into more than one "park", where each park has different types of meters. To do this you would Add New under Park Setup / Parks, enter all of the same information (including the Auth code), except that the Short name would need to be different and of course the meter wrap-around would be different. Then you would need to go through each of your Sites (in Sites Setup) and select which park they belong to according to how many digits its meter has.
Enter previous/current meter readings
In order for it to calculate the electric usage, it needs to know the previous reading for each site before you enter the new readings. To do this, you need to go into each Site and enter a reading.
1. Go to Maintenance / Park Setup / Sites.
2. Select the first site (or the first one that has a meter) and click Edit site details.
3. Enter the Reading, under Electric Meter Last. There's no need to enter a date at this time, since that will change automatically when you enter the new readings.
4. To go through several sites, you can use the Next button instead of Saving and Editing each time.
Meter Rates
Now it needs to know how much to charge for each kilowatt-hour of the reading. Some situations require complex tiered rates, for which there are step-by-step Rates Examples, but here's the basic procedure for creating a flat rate per kwH.
1. Go to Maintenance / Park Setup / Rates).
2. Click New rate definition.
3. Select "Electric Meter" in the Rate Type field.
4. Enter "Electric meter" (or whatever you want) in the Description field.
5. Click the Charge button.
6. Select (click on) "Electricity" from the drop-down category list (or whatever category you might have added for this).
7. Press the Tab key to change to the Item Description field, and change it if you want (e.g. "Metered electric"). Keep in mind that the current and previous readings will automatically be added to this description on their receipt, for instance "Metered electric (2500-2200)".
8. Press the Tab key twice to get to the Each field (no Qty is necessary).
9. Enter the amount per unit, not including taxes, for instance ".0623". Notice that you can include the fractional cents as added decimal places. It will show up to 4 places in the dialog, but the number will actually be stored and used for calculations exactly as you enter it.
10. Press the Tab key to accept the amount.
11. Check the boxes for one or more taxes under Auto-add tax, if they apply.
12. Click the Save button.
Entering readings
Now you're all set up, so to enter readings you can go to Reports / Electric Meter Readings. With the default settings you might not see your sites or their occupants, so there are a few things you should do to configure this:
1. Go to Reports / Electric Meter Readings
2. Make sure Filter by last reading date is not checked.
3. Click Select Resv Types, and highlight all types that you might need to enter readings for (e.g. Normal and Monthly), and click OK.
Now you should see all sites that you had entered previous readings for above, and any with current reservations will show an occupant name. To enter readings and put the charges on each reservation, just fill in the new readings under Batch Reading Entry and click Add Charges & Update Readings. For more details, see the help/documentation on that report.