Best Practices for Entering Meters on Service Calls when Tech did not get the Meter

Ever had a tech forget to get a meter on a service call or input the meter wrong so EA won't accept it? When this happens a lot of us will input the same meter as the previous valid meter reading in order to complete the call. Best practice on this method is to make sure you are also backing up the meter reading date on the call to the same day that you used for the previous valid reading.

So if you were going to use the meter from 8/26/14 in the meter history above, you will want to change the date of the meter reading on the service call to 8/26/14 also.

If you do not change the date to match the date of the meter you are using from meter history, then this will negatively impact your average monthly volumes. EA calculates average monthly volumes based on the number of copies and the days in between the meter readings. So if you do not change the meter date on the call and input the same meter from 8/26/14 then EA will think that this piece of equipment did not run any copies/prints in 42 days. This will significantly decrease their average monthly volume, especially in the 3 month average range. It also has an adverse affect when an accurate meter is finally entered. Once an accurate meter is entered, EA will look at the copies ran between that time period and re-calculate the average. So if the previous meter was one that was matched from meter history but the date wasn't backed up to match then this will inaccurately increase your average monthly volume. It is very important to make sure the date is matched to the date of the meter you are using in meter history. If averages are not correct then you are getting bad data from EA. This can cause problems when evaluating contracts, checking customers volumes and it can cause you to under estimate or over estimate meters when using meter estimates.

Whether you bulk estimate or manually estimate meters when you can't retrieve them, EA still uses days in between meters to calculate averages. See settings above. There is a serious risk of potential lost revenue or over billed revenue.