Most of the year, nobody is looking at the energy data on a property.
Electric comes from DTE. Gas from Consumers, if the building has gas. Water from whoever the city contracted. Each one has its own portal, its own PDF, its own account number that does not match the other two. The usual system is a spreadsheet. Someone updates it when a bill arrives, or when they remember, or the week a filing is due.
That last case is the common one.
Michigan's benchmarking rule (EGC §8.5) wants twelve continuous months of electric, gas, and water in ENERGY STAR. Not twelve months of whatever you could find. Continuous. If March water is missing, you are not filing-ready, even if the rest of the year looks fine. People discover that in March of the following year, while they are trying to submit.
Electric and gas can arrive on their own
DTE and Consumers both speak Green Button. Once an account is authorized, usage shows up without anyone typing it: 15-minute intervals on electric, monthly on gas. Pulse polls those accounts every day. When a token expires, it refreshes. That is plumbing. It should be invisible.
Water still arrives as a PDF
Most municipal utilities still send a bill in the mail, or a PDF. Sometimes it is one page. Sometimes it is a packet: thirteen scanned pages, one building per page, two months on the same bill, usage in cubic feet with no unit printed next to the number.
You can key that into Excel. A lot of offices still do. Or you drop the file and the software splits the pages, matches each one to a building, converts CF to gallons, and puts May and June on the Water tab.
The coverage view is the part that matters
A chart with a pretty line is easy to ship and easy to lie with. A matrix of meters against months is harder to ignore. Green if the month is on file. Grey if the account did not exist yet. Red if you should have it and you do not. That red cell is the work: call the utility, find the PDF, upload it, move on. Do that in October, not the week ENERGY STAR is due.
We built Pulse at Sparko for that job. Green Button from DTE and Consumers. Water from the city PDF. One coverage view before you file.
If you run properties in Michigan and the energy numbers still live in a spreadsheet, that is the problem we are on.