Entities in be.ENERGISED

Please note that the Registered company tab in the user management is only displayed if you have the associated rights. Not every be.ENERGISED subscription has access to these rights. Therefore, check whether your subscription includes the respective right and whether you have to activate it for your user group. More information about the general rights management can be found here.

 

In be.ENERGISED it is possible and necessary to map your company structure as a tree structure. For each of these units of your company structure, a so-called entity is created. The entity management has an impact on different areas, such as identification media, charging stations, tariffs and invoicing.

 

What is an entity?

As already touched upon above, "entity" refers to a unit of your company structure. Entities are created in the form of a tree structure in be.ENERGISED. Since it is a tree structure, it is possible to create parent or subsidiary entities.

In the case of a parent entity, one speaks of a company in your company structure that has other companies (entities) under it. Conversely, one speaks of a subordinate entity if it is subordinate to another entity.

 

Entity structure, company structure and organizational structure all refer to the aforementioned tree structure in be.ENERGISED.

With the help of entities, something like multi-client capability is ensured. Multi-client capability means nothing more than that you, as the main administrator of the be.ENERGISED access, also give your customers access to be.ENERGISED, but they can only view content restricted to their companies. Or, for example, you as the parent company also want to integrate your subsidiaries into be.ENERGISED and map this relationship accordingly.

 

What do you need entities for?

Entities are necessary to be able to map use cases in different areas. Since entities define the relationships between the companies you manage, entity management is an important basis for the operation of the use case you define.

a) Entities map your business structure.

No matter if you want to provide your customers with an access to be.ENERGISED, if you have different company locations or if you are a parent company with several subsidiaries under you. The relationships of these organizations to each other are defined with the entity management in be.ENERGISED.

b) Entities define how charging stations, customers (CRM contacts) and authentication media relate to each other.

For correct invoicing or crediting, it is necessary to define which authentication media are assigned to which customer, who issues the authentication media, who owns the charging station, etc. These affiliation relationships are defined by the entities.

c) Entities regulate access control to charging stations.

Often, not everyone within your instance should be able to charge at each of your charging stations. To determine who can charge at which charging stations, you need the entity structure.

d) Entities play a major role in rate management and invoicing.

How can you define in tariff management who has to pay how much at which charging station? Here, too, the entity structure is essential.

e) Entities are also necessary for rights management and which data a user can see in be.ENERGISED.

For many use cases it is necessary to restrict the access rights of the sub-entities. You use the entities to define who can see what and do what.

 

Where in be.ENERGISED are entities created?

You create entities in be.ENERGISED under User management/Companies/Regsitered Companies. To create a new entity, click the "Add new entity" button.

 

Fill in the fields correctly and as completely as possible.

Please note that when an entity is created, an associated CRM contact is automatically created. For more details, please refer to this release note. The fields name, customer number, address (street, postal code, etc.), telephone, fax, e-mail and website can then no longer be adjusted in the CRM contact, but only via the entity.

 

Name, Street, ZIP, City and Country are self-explanatory.

VAT-No.: Here you enter the VAT identification number.

Customer No.: Here it is very important to assign a customer number, which has not yet been assigned in your instance. This customer number will also be assigned to the automatically generated CRM contact. If you do not enter a customer number, the corresponding CRM contact will not have a customer number either.

Company ID: It is not mandatory to enter a company ID. This is a free text field, which otherwise has no further effect on other areas.

Phone, Fax, Web are again self-explanatory.

E-Mail: The e-mail address should be entered in any case, since this is then necessary for the invoice and credit note dispatch.

Comment: An internal comment can be added here.

Type: Select the role of the entity here. For example, as a charging station operator, select "Operator".

Allow as sub-operator: This point is relevant if you want sub-entities of your corporate structure to act as EMP themselves and send invoices on their behalf.

Allow customer registration: If you have the app, specify here whether customers can register and are automatically assigned to the entity.

Operator ID: If the company acts as an EMP and has registered its own operator ID with Hubject, enter the operator ID here.

Invoicing configuration: If the company sends invoices on their behalf, select the appropriate invoice number range here (must be created by you under Finance/ Settings/ Invoicing numbers).

Invoice Reply-To E-Mail Address: See here.

Force display of purchase prices: If it is necessary for you that the subsidiary company sees only the purchase prices of the charging processes, you can activate the setting here.

Abweichende Gutschriftsadresse: See here.

Timezone: Set individual time zones for the respective companies here. This will be taken into account during the invoice run, so that charging processes are charged according to this setting.

Contract notification email: If you use an app and you want to receive the information when a new contract is created in the app, you must enter the corresponding recipient e-mail address here.

 

Portal- & App-Settings

Are not relevant in this context and do not need to be filled out.

 

Customer number format: You can specify a custom format such as "AA0-%d", where "%d" is a variable for the customer number.

 

Entity order

The arrangement of the individual entities can be done quite simply by using drag-and-drop.

 

The entity structure and the mapping of the hierarchy are primarily decisive for the assignment of rights. By default, users see only the information that has been assigned to their entity. To grant a user more access rights, these rights must be explicitly assigned. If a user has several groups with different rights configurations, the rights configuration that grants the most rights always takes effect.

 

Automatic creation of a CRM contact

As already mentioned, when you create an entity, an associated CRM contact is automatically created. 

In your "User management" under "Registered Companies", when you go to "Update details" for the respective entity, you will see the associated contact.

 

Under CRM/Contact information/All customers you will then find the linked company CRM contact. If you go to the edit menu of the CRM contact via "Edit", you will see that certain fields (basic data) are grayed out.

 

These grayed-out fields are mirrored directly from the entity and can only be edited in the entity.

All billing relevant data is taken from the CRM contact. All information about CRM in be.ENERGISED can be found in this article.

 

What can be assigned to entities?

1) User

Via User management/Users/User list you can see all users of your be.ENERGISED access. 

Via Details/Edit you can assign a user to an entity in the field "Company".

 

The assignment of users to an entity is crucial for rights management. Under User management/Groups/Group list, you set per user group whether a user can view only the information of his entity, the information of his entity plus all subsidiary entities, or the information of all entities when he logs into be.ENERGISED. 

 

Further rights for the user group must then be specifically enabled within this edit menu. More information about this here.

 

2) Charging stations

You can assign charging stations to your entities. You do this under Infrastructure/Charging stations/Station list in the charging station data sheet of the respective charging station. 

 

To do this, go to the data sheet icon of the charging station and then to Edit/Basic information. In the field "Owner" you can define the owner of the charging station from your entities. Then click on "Save".

After that, you will see in the entity management that the charging station has been assigned to the corresponding entity.

 

The assignment of charging stations to an entity is necessary primarily for two use cases:

 

a)  Entity based / charging station

Here we are in the area of the automated invoicing function (Finance/Tariffs & invoicing/Automated invoicing). In this case, you or your sub-entities are charging station operators (CPO) and invoicing EMPs for non-community charging sessions should originate from each entity individually. This means that each entity can individually use its own invoice layout with its own invoice number range. For this, the ownership of the charging stations must be clearly defined via the entity management.

Ex: Your sub-entities include "Company A" with "Charging Station A" and "Company B" with "Charging Station B".  An EV Driver of EMP's XY (non-Community) charges at "Charging Station A" and at "Charging Station B". Thus, EMP XY receives an invoice from "Company A" and then separately one from "Company B". Both company A and B act as their own billers.

 

b) CPO crediting process

If you want to issue credit notes to your sub-companies (sub-CPOs), the charging stations must also be assigned to the corresponding entity. For a detailed description of how to issue credit notes to sub-CPOs, please refer to this Support Center article.

 

3) Authentication media

Just as the assignment of charging stations to the corresponding entity is necessary for invoicing, this also applies to authentication media. If you select "Entity based / authentication media", it is mandatory to assign the identification media to the entities.

To assign an identification medium to an entity, you must go to the edit menu of the identification medium and select the entity at "Issuing entity".

 

In this use case, your sub-companies are sub-EMPs. Each of these companies should issue a separate invoice to the end customers based on the assignment of the authentication media.

E.g.: Your subsidiary entities include "Company A", which independently issues authentication media to its end customers. The authentication media have "Company A" assigned as the issuing company. The "Billing contact" and "Owner" is, for example, the end customer. In this constellation, "Company A" itself issues the invoice to the end customer, with its own invoicing numbers and thus its own invoice layout.

 

More detailed information and application examples regarding the automated invoicing function can be found here.