Short answer

Add each meter (water, gas, or electricity) as its own asset, then create a recurring Job against it using the Meter Reading checklist. The checklist captures a numeric reading, whether it's an actual or estimated read, and can raise a defect if the meter itself is faulty or inaccessible. Meter readings are jobs, not inspections — there's nothing to "pass or fail" about a number.

Detail

  1. Register the meter as an asset. Add it like any other asset (photo, AI will usually suggest "water meter" / "electric meter" / "gas meter" — correct it if it guesses wrong), then rename it to the actual meter number your team already uses, so the record matches what finance recognises on the bill. If the meter sits outside any drawn building area (so it won't inherit a location tag), put the building or location straight into the asset name instead (e.g. "Water meter, Town Hall") — that's what feeds through to the job title, so whoever reads the task list can tell at a glance which meter it is.
  2. Position it precisely. If the photo's location doesn't land the pin exactly on the meter (e.g. inside a building it can't get a fix from), drag the pin to the right spot — dropping it inside a building's outline gives it that building's location tag too.
  3. Create a recurring Job, not an Inspection, using the Meter Reading checklist. Most councils read meters monthly, but any frequency works. Assign it to whoever takes the reading (often a different person from your inspection team).
  4. If you have several meters on the same frequency, group them into a routine the same way you would defibrillators or bins — one container, one schedule. If it's just a couple of meters, standalone recurring jobs are simpler.
  5. On the day, the assignee opens the job on the mobile app, enters the reading, marks it Actual or Estimated, and submits — no need to leave the app or write it down separately.
  6. Export when you're ready. Once you've built up readings, export them to CSV/spreadsheet the same way as any other task data — handy for handing to a finance team that currently gets a manual spreadsheet.

Watch-outs

  • Give your internal finance/facilities team a view, not just raw exports, if they need it — a user with the right permissions can see the meter's task history directly; you don't have to re-key it into a spreadsheet for them (Seaford's finance team currently get a manual Excel sheet from the inspecting officer — moving the source data into Civic.ly removes that hand-off).
  • There's no automatic scheduled export to a named recipient yet (e.g. "email finance a spreadsheet on the 1st of every month automatically") — today the finance/facilities user bookmarks the filtered view and downloads it themselves when they need it (Henley asked for exactly this on 6 Jul; not built).
  • A sister/associated tenant (e.g. a golf course or leisure trust) needs its own user set up separately if it should see its own meters — permissions don't cross tenants automatically.
  • This feeds a future carbon-footprint calculation from consumption data — John's stated roadmap direction, not yet shipped, but worth mentioning to a council that's motivated by environmental reporting.
  • Don't confuse this with vehicle mileage — mileage capture on vehicle checklists is a separate, earlier feature that meter readings were modelled on; they're two different checklist families on two different asset types.