Dashboard builder

Put every meter reading on one energy dashboard
with the cost beside it.

Tell Netiva’s agent how your sites are metered and it builds a web app that turns readings and invoices into cost per site, trends and flags on the meters worth a visit.

Start building free More dashboard ideas
Starter prompt

Build an energy dashboard web app for a facilities team running 12 sites. Hold each site with its gross floor area and occupied hours, and each meter under it: electricity, gas or water, its unit, its multiplier and whether it is a main meter or a sub-meter. Site staff sign in and enter readings on a phone during a walk-round, with a photo of the display. Log every utility invoice per account with the period, billed use, peak demand and total cost. Show use and cost per site per month, cost per square foot, and flag any meter running more than 20% above the same week last year.

Build it in Netiva Paste the prompt into a new workspace and adjust it to your business.
Overview

Who this energy dashboard is for

Energy data arrives in pieces: a PDF invoice six weeks after the meter was read, a spreadsheet one site manager keeps for the sub-meters, and a supplier portal only one person can log into. By the time a bad month is visible, whatever caused it has been running that way since spring. An energy dashboard you build with Netiva holds sites, meters, readings and invoices together, so kWh and cost sit side by side per building and an odd week gets noticed while someone can still walk out and look at the plant.

Key features

What your energy dashboard can do

  • Readings from every meter

    Each site carries its own meters — main, sub and tenant — with the unit and multiplier they read in. Staff enter the number on the display during a walk-round, and where your provider publishes an API the app can pull readings instead.

    • Electricity, gas, water and heat meters grouped under each site
    • Readings entered on a phone with a photo of the display
    • Use since the last read worked out from the meter multiplier
    • Nightly pulls from a utility or metering provider’s API with your own key

  • Invoices checked against your reads

    Every invoice is logged against its account with the period, billed use, peak demand and total cost, then set next to what your own meters recorded for those days — so an estimate or a wrong tariff shows up early.

    • Invoice file attached to each bill record
    • Billed use next to metered use for the same period
    • Blended cost per kWh worked out for every account
    • Standing and demand charges kept apart from the usage line

  • Trends and the weeks worth chasing

    Use and cost per site, month over month and against the same period last year, with heating and cooling degree days in the comparison so a cold January reads as weather rather than as a fault.

    • Cost and kWh per site, per month and per square foot
    • Flags when a meter runs above its own baseline
    • Comparisons adjusted for degree days at each site’s location
    • Saved views per region, utility or site type

  • Reminders and the monthly pack

    Scheduled emails chase a site whose reading is overdue, alert the energy manager when a meter crosses a threshold, and send the portfolio summary on the same day every month.

    • Reminder when a site’s reading is past due
    • Alert email when a meter crosses a threshold you set
    • Monthly summary of cost and use across the portfolio
    • Site managers sign in and land on their own buildings
Data model

The collections behind it

Netiva keeps your records in built-in collections. Here’s a starting structure — the agent adapts it to your prompt, and you can change it any time.

Sites

Every building or location you pay energy bills for.

  • Name (required) Text
  • Site type (required) Office, warehouse, retail, depot, school… Text
  • Gross floor area (required) Used for cost per square foot and for energy use intensity Number
  • Degree day location Nearest weather station, so comparisons can be adjusted for the weather Text
  • Occupied hours Typical open hours, used to sort out-of-hours use Text
  • Site manager (required) Gets reading reminders and the monthly pack Text
  • Utility accounts Account numbers billed to this site Text

Meters

Each meter and sub-meter under a site, with the unit it reads in.

  • Site (required) Relation to Sites
  • Meter number (required) Serial number on the meter, so a swap is easy to spot Text
  • Utility (required) Electricity, gas, water, heat or steam Text
  • Unit (required) kWh, therms, ccf, cubic meters or gallons Text
  • Role (required) Main, sub-meter or tenant meter Text
  • Multiplier CT or pulse factor; 1 for a meter you read directly Number
  • Parent meter Set on sub-meters so their use is not counted twice in the site total Relation to Meters
  • Installed on Date

Readings

A dated read from one meter, taken on site or sent by a feed.

  • Meter (required) Relation to Meters
  • Read at (required) Date & time
  • Register reading The number on the display, before the multiplier Number
  • Use since last read Worked out from the previous read, or sent straight from a feed Number
  • Source (required) Walk-round, supplier portal or API feed Text
  • Photo Picture of the display, so a disputed read can be checked Image
  • Note Meter change, rollover or an estimate Paragraph
  • Read by (required) Filled in from the signed-in user Text

Bills

One utility invoice per account and period, to set against your own reads.

  • Site (required) Relation to Sites
  • Utility account (required) Text
  • Period start (required) Date
  • Period end (required) Date
  • Billed use (required) In the unit printed on the invoice, for checking against your own reads Number
  • Peak demand Billed kW on electricity accounts, usually the highest interval in the period Number
  • Total cost (required) Invoiced total, including standing and demand charges Number
  • Invoice File

Required field. Types are Netiva collection field types.

Screens

Pages and screens to start with

A typical first version. Ask the agent for more, or annotate the preview to change any of them.

  • Portfolio

    Every site this month: use, cost, cost per square foot and the change against the same month last year, biggest movers first.

    Signed-in users

  • Site detail

    One building: its meters, the last read on each, twelve months of use and cost, and the invoices covering the same periods.

    Signed-in users

  • Enter a reading

    The walk-round screen on a phone: pick the meter, type the number on the display, add a photo and move to the next one.

    Signed-in users

  • Flagged meters

    Meters running above their baseline, with the recent reads underneath and a place to record what the engineer found.

    Signed-in users

  • Invoice check

    Invoices by account with billed use, demand and cost beside the use your own meters recorded for those days.

    Your team

  • Monthly report

    Use and cost by site and utility for a chosen month, with degree-day-adjusted figures and a carbon line per site.

    Your team
How it works

From prompt to a live energy dashboard

  1. Describe your portfolio

    Tell Netiva how many sites you run, what each one is metered for and who walks round to read them. The agent drafts collections for sites, meters, readings and bills, and puts the first screens in a live preview.

  2. Load the meter list

    Type your meters into the collection grid, or describe them to the collection assistant and check the rows it drafts. Set each one’s unit, multiplier and parent meter so site totals add up once.

  3. Shape the walk-round

    Open the reading screen on a phone in the live preview. Annotate whatever slows a round down — field order, a number pad that is too small, the photo step — and the agent changes it while you watch.

  4. Publish and turn on the emails

    Publish in one click, invite site managers to sign in and switch on the reminder and monthly emails. Every later change is checkpointed, so an edit that breaks a report is easy to roll back.

Why Netiva

Netiva vs a traditional build

Building an energy dashboard with Netiva compared with a traditional build
Criterion With Netiva Traditional build
Meter readings Entered on a phone at the meter, with a photo and the time of the read attached A clipboard round once a month, typed into a spreadsheet days later
Invoice checking Each invoice logged against its account and set beside your own reads for the same days Invoice PDFs filed in a shared drive and spot-checked when someone has time
Getting started Describe what you need in chat and watch it take shape in a live preview Hire developers, or stitch together templates, plugins and a hosting plan
Content and data Built-in collections with nine field types, bound straight to your pages Set up and connect a separate database or CMS
Making changes Ask the agent; every change is checkpointed and reversible File a ticket, wait for a sprint, redeploy
Hosting and domain Global hosting and automatic SSL; connect a custom domain from the Starter plan Buy hosting, then install and renew SSL certificates yourself
Code ownership Clean production code you own and can export Locked into a template, plugin or agency setup
Examples

Ways teams use it

  • A school district with 14 buildings

    Caretakers read the gas and electricity meters every Monday morning. Once those reads are set against degree days, the energy manager can see which school moved most against last winter and send the boiler schedule review there first.

  • A cold storage operator with three depots

    Refrigeration is most of the bill, so each plant room sits on its own sub-meter. A week above baseline raises a flag, and the engineer records what they found on the meter, which builds a history worth reading before the next service visit.

  • A retail chain with 60 utility accounts

    Store managers enter one reading a month and finance logs the invoices. Blended cost per kWh by account shows which contracts are worth renegotiating at renewal, and which stores have been billed on estimates for two quarters.

Good to know

Before you build

  • Netiva doesn’t read your meters

    There is no hardware in this. Numbers come from someone entering them, or from a utility or metering provider’s API you connect with your own key. Pulse outputs, building management points and half-hourly data all depend on that provider publishing an API you can call.

  • Degree days and emission factors come from you

    Adjusting for weather needs degree days for each site’s location, and a carbon line needs an emission factor per unit. Enter them month by month or call a data provider’s API for them. Neither figure ships inside the app, and both move over time.

  • Invoices are still paid somewhere else

    The dashboard records what you were billed so you can query it; it doesn’t pay anything and it isn’t your accounting ledger. Keep the invoice file attached to each record so a disputed figure can be traced back to the source document.

  • Benchmark scores stay in their own tool

    An ENERGY STAR score is calculated in Portfolio Manager from data you submit there, against national survey results for the same building type. The app can hold each year’s score and energy use intensity beside your own figures; it does not produce the score.

FAQ

Questions about building an energy dashboard

How does the energy dashboard turn meter readings into usage?

Each reading stores the number on the display, so the app subtracts the previous read for that meter and applies its multiplier to get the use between the two dates. A note field covers the cases that break the arithmetic: a register that rolls over, a meter swapped out mid-month or an estimate. Where a feed already sends interval data, the reading is stored as use rather than as a register number.

Can it pull readings from our utility instead of a walk-round?

Apps built with Netiva can call any REST API with the key stored securely, so if your supplier or metering provider publishes one, you can describe that connection to the agent and have readings land each night. In the US, many utilities support the Green Button standard, which covers both a customer download and authorized transfer of usage data to a third party. Check what your own accounts offer first.

How does it separate a real spike from a cold month?

By putting the weather into the comparison. Degree days in the US are counted from a base of 65°F: a day whose mean temperature falls below that adds heating degree days, a warmer day adds cooling degree days. Store the monthly figure for each site’s location and the app can show use per degree day, so a hard winter reads as weather while a stuck valve stays visible.

Can the dashboard work out energy use intensity per building?

Yes, once it holds gross floor area on each site and converts every meter to one unit. Energy use intensity is a year of energy divided by floor area, usually kBtu per square foot; a kWh is about 3,412 Btu, and gas converts using the heat content printed on your invoice. The ENERGY STAR score is a separate 1 to 100 scale where 50 is median performance, and you can store the score you were given.

Can we report carbon from the same numbers?

You can hold the figures your reporting is built on. Fuel burned on site is Scope 1, while purchased electricity, steam, heat or cooling is Scope 2, so tag each meter and ask for CO2e worked out from an emission factor per unit that you enter and date. The factors come from your grid region or your supplier; the app records them rather than choosing them for you.

What happens to the energy dashboard if our energy consultant leaves?

You keep it. Netiva writes clean, framework-standard code that you own and can export whenever you want, with no proprietary runtime, and your team can go on changing the app in plain language without touching that code. If you do have developers, they can edit the files directly. Every change is checkpointed, so an edit that breaks a report can be rolled back.

Keep exploring
All ideas
Compare

How Netiva compares

All comparisons

Drafted with AI assistance from Netiva’s product pages and reviewed by the Netiva team. Example data models, screens and prompts are illustrative starting points, not customer projects.

Build your energy dashboard today

Describe it in a sentence and watch Netiva’s agent build it. Free to start — no credit card required.

Start building free Browse more ideas