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. Where finance currently receives a hand-built Excel sheet from whoever reads the meters, putting the readings into Civic.ly removes that hand-off entirely.
  • 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 or facilities user bookmarks the filtered view and downloads it themselves when they need it. It is a common request and not built yet.
  • 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.
  • Consumption data is the groundwork for carbon reporting. Working out a footprint from meter readings is a direction we want to take, though it isn't built yet. If environmental reporting matters to your council, capturing the readings now means the history is there when it arrives.
  • 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.