Doorbook.
The monthly round

Reading the meters

This is the part of the month that takes real work: walking the building and reading each meter. Doorbook is built around making it a single numeric keypad and nothing else.

5 min read Updated 2026-08-13

Type what the meter face says

Not the units used — the number printed on the dial. Doorbook does the subtraction. This is the single most common thing to get wrong, and it is worth being certain about before your first bill goes out.

HOW A METER BECOMES MONEY Last month 07720 This month 07815 Units used 95 units Your rate × 7.00 Charged 665.00 Doorbook stores the counter value, never the difference — so a correction to one monthcan never quietly shift the next.
The meter is a counter. Consumption is the gap between two readings.

Walking the building

  1. 1Open

    Start at the first room

    Doorbook shows the room number, the tenant, and last month's reading for the meter you are standing at.

  2. 2Type

    Tap the reading in

    One numeric keypad. As you type, the app shows how many units that implies and what it comes to at your rate, so an obviously wrong figure is obvious immediately.

  3. 3Switch

    Electricity, then water

    Confirm one and Doorbook moves to the other meter for the same room, then on to the next room.

  4. 4Stop

    Stop whenever you like

    It remembers where you got to. A building read over two evenings is completely normal, and no connection is needed at any point.

Rooms you can skip

  • A room with no current tenant is vacant, and is left out of metering and billing until somebody moves in.
  • A room you skip stays unread, and simply has no bill this month. It is not billed for rent either — a bill exists only once both meters have been read.
  • Reading only the electricity meter and not the water one leaves the room unbilled. Doorbook waits for both.

A reading it refuses

Doorbook will not accept a reading lower than last month's, because a meter only counts up. If the meter genuinely rolled past its last digit, or was replaced with a new one, edit the room and set its opening reading to the new figure instead of trying to force the reading in.

Changing a reading you already entered

Re-enter it. As long as you have not closed the cycle, a corrected reading recalculates that room's bill immediately. Once the cycle is closed, this month's readings have become next month's baseline and the closed figure is history.

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