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This guide walks you through setting up your organisation in UMS by hand, one entity at a time — useful for understanding how the pieces fit together, or for small additions. If your organisation already has data, skip ahead to the sections relevant to you.
Setting up a whole portfolio? The faster path is the guided onboarding wizard — upload documents for AI to read, or load everything from a single file, then review and create it all at once. Come back here when you want to add records manually.
Plan selection is optional during sign-up. You can skip the Plan step and finish onboarding without a subscription — just click Skip for now — set up billing later on the plan picker. A billing manager can subscribe at any time from Settings → Billing; the billing gate will prompt you once your trial or grace period ends.

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Step 1: Create your accounts

Accounts are the top-level containers — typically one per customer or business entity.
1

Open Accounts

Navigate to Accounts in the sidebar.
2

Start a new account

Click the + button in the top-right.
3

Enter account details

Enter the company name, ABN/ACN, and entity type.
4

Save

Click Save.
If you manage a business with multiple subsidiaries, create a parent account and link child accounts to it using the Parent field.
See Creating Accounts for a detailed walkthrough.

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Step 2: Add sites

Sites represent the physical locations where energy is consumed — offices, warehouses, retail stores, factories.
1

Open Sites

Navigate to Sites in the sidebar (or use the Sites tab on an account).
2

Start a new site

Click the + button.
3

Enter the address

Enter the site name and address — UMS uses Google Places for address autocomplete.
4

Link to an account

Link the site to the correct account.
5

Save

Click Save.

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Step 3: Set up connections

Connections represent individual utility meters — electricity NMIs, gas MIRNs, or water meters.
1

Open Connections

Navigate to Connections in the sidebar.
2

Start a new connection

Click the + button.
3

Enter the identifier

Enter the connection identifier (e.g. NMI for electricity, MIRN for gas).
4

Set type and site

Select the utility type and link to a site.
5

Save

Click Save.

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Step 4: Create agreements

Agreements track energy contracts between your accounts and suppliers.
1

Open Agreements

Navigate to Agreements in the sidebar.
2

Start a new agreement

Click the + button.
3

Enter agreement details

Enter the agreement name, type, supplier, and contract dates.
4

Save

Click Save.
5

Add connections

Add connections to the agreement via the Connections tab on the agreement detail page.
See Managing Agreements for details on bulk-adding connections and managing tariffs.

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Step 5: Upload your first invoice

1

Open Invoices

Navigate to Invoices in the sidebar.
2

Drop in a PDF

Drag and drop a PDF invoice onto the upload area (or click to browse).
3

Let UtiliRead process it

UMS automatically processes the invoice via UtiliRead (OCR).
4

Review the match

The system extracts data, matches it to the correct account and connection, and creates the invoice record.
5

Verify the data

Check the invoice detail page to verify the extracted data.
Alternatively, set up email forwarding from your energy retailers to your UMS inbox for fully automated processing.

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What to do next

Once your basic structure is in place, here are the most valuable next steps:

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Set up tariff rates

Configure tariff structures for your agreements so UMS can validate invoice charges against expected rates. See Managing Tariffs.

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Enable invoice validation

Navigate to Validation to check your invoices for billing errors, tariff mismatches, and missing invoices. See Invoice Validation and Review.

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Run an agreement expiry report

Navigate to Reports and run the Agreement Expiry Report to identify contracts approaching renewal — so you can start renegotiating early.

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Configure brokerage (if applicable)

If you earn commission on energy agreements, set up brokerage records and run calculations. See Running Brokerage Calculations.

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Bulk import via CSV

For large portfolios, use the Bulk Upload Wizard to import accounts, sites, connections, tariffs, and more from CSV files. Open it from your avatar menu under Bulk Imports. To stand up a whole hierarchy from one file, use the all-in-one onboarding upload. See Bulk Importing Data.

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Invite your team

Add colleagues to your organisation and control what each of them can access. See Setting Up a User.

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Subscribe to a plan

If you skipped plan selection during onboarding, choose a plan from Settings → Billing before your grace period ends. See Billing & Plans.