Avarni reads your utility bills and pulls out the consumption, the period and the amount. You upload the bill and review what was extracted.
What you can upload
PDF, PNG, JPG, GIF and WebP.
Up to 10 MB per file, and up to 200 files in one upload.
Can Avarni read invoices that are not utility bills, or photos of a meter?
PDFs and Images is built for utility bills: electricity, gas, fuel, waste and water. Avarni reads each line that has a quantity and looks for a consumption unit, such as kWh, litres or kilograms.
A purchase invoice, for example for paper or components, usually counts items, reams or boxes. Avarni usually cannot turn these into a consumption unit. The row then gets the input unit Unknown. A row with an Unknown unit produces no emissions.
For purchases, use Spreadsheet instead. Give the quantity in a unit that your factor uses, such as kilograms or tonnes of paper.
Avarni does not read photos of a meter. A meter shows a running total, not the consumption for a period. Work out the consumption for each period from your readings. Then upload it with Spreadsheet, one row for each period.
Upload bills
Go to Imported Data.
Select Import, then PDFs and Images.
Choose the Method the bills belong to.
Upload your files.
Review what was extracted
Avarni does not use the extracted figures until you confirm them.
On the Imports tab, select View on the upload.
Open each file.
Check the extracted values against the bill shown beside them.
Confirm the file.
Check the consumption, the unit and the billing period. Those three drive the emissions figure.
Which bills read best
Avarni recognises the layouts of most Australian and New Zealand electricity, gas, fuel, waste and water retailers. A recognised layout extracts more reliably and needs less correction.
A bill from an unrecognised retailer is still read. Expect to correct more fields.
If you change retailer, tell your Avarni lead. We can add the new layout.
Can I upload a bill from an overseas retailer?
Yes. Avarni reads it like any bill from a retailer it does not recognise. Expect to correct more fields.
Check these fields on each row:
Date and End Date. A date such as 03/04/2026 can be read as day and month or as month and day. If Avarni cannot read a date at all, it uses the date the file was imported.
Country. Avarni takes the country from the address on the bill. If it finds no country, it uses Australia.
Factor. For electricity, check that the factor is for the country and grid region where the site is.
When a bill will not read
Some bills produce an empty row. This usually means one of the following:
The file is a scan of poor quality.
The bill is a summary or statement rather than a tax invoice.
The layout is one Avarni has not seen.
Enter the values by hand on the empty row, or send the bill to your Avarni lead.
What if an invoice shows no consumption?
Avarni calculates emissions from consumption, not from the amount charged. An invoice that shows only a dollar amount gives Avarni nothing to calculate from. Rent invoices and some landlord recharges are like this.
Avarni reads each file on its own. It does not combine a tax invoice with a separate consumption report.
If the consumption is in a separate report, upload the report. If the report does not read, enter the consumption by hand or use Spreadsheet.
If the invoice and the report both show the same consumption, upload only one of them. Otherwise the consumption is counted twice.
If you have no consumption for a site at all, ask your Avarni lead about estimating it from spend.
Bills that need care
Three patterns cause wrong figures. Check these before you confirm:
Invoices that show an outstanding balance as well as current charges. Confirm the amount used is the current charges only.
Bills with several tables. Extra tables of loss charges or ancillary charges can be read as additional consumption.
Multi-site bills. Confirm every site on the bill has been picked up, not just the first.
Can one invoice list several fuels or several sites?
Yes. Avarni creates one row for each line on the invoice. Each row has its own Activity Class, Input Unit and Location/Address.
Check each row before you confirm the file. For example, LPG, diesel and petrol on one invoice must each have the correct class and unit.
How does Avarni assign each row to a facility?
When Avarni imports a row, it looks for a facility in this order:
The meter number on the bill (NMI or MIRN).
The account number on the bill.
The address on the bill, matched to a facility at or near that address.
Avarni assigns a facility only when exactly one facility matches. The facility then sets the Entity. If no facility matches, or several match, the row has no facility.
To make matching reliable, go to Facilities and record each site's meter numbers and account numbers as identifiers.
On a multi-site bill, check the facility on every row. Avarni can read the first site's address onto every row. Changing Location/Address does not move a row to a different facility. Set the Facility field on the row instead.
To fix many rows at once:
Go to Emissions Hub.
Filter on Facility and choose Unattributed.
Select the rows and select Bulk edit.
Choose Entity / Facility and set the facility.
Business unit and other attributes. Avarni fills a custom field when the bill has a label with the same name. For example, a custom field called Cost Centre is filled from a Cost Centre label on the bill. For anything else, set the custom field with Bulk edit in the Emissions Hub.
Why does a row from a PDF have no factor?
Avarni chooses a factor from each row's Activity Class and Input Unit. If Avarni does not recognise the unit printed on the bill, it sets Input Unit to Unknown and Activity Class to Other Charges.
A row with an Unknown input unit produces no emissions, whatever factor you choose. Correct the unit first:
Set Input Unit to the unit on the bill, for example kilolitres for water.
Set Activity Class.
Choose the Factor.
To fix many rows at once:
Go to Emissions Hub.
Filter on Input Unit and choose Unknown.
Select the rows and select Bulk edit.
Choose Input Unit and set the unit. If Avarni asks for a factor, choose it in the same step.
Some Other Charges rows are supply or service charges with no consumption. Do not give them a unit. To exclude them, see Review the data Avarni extracted from your invoices.
Why does a bill produce rows for months it does not cover?
Some bills print a table of usage for earlier months. Avarni can read that table as consumption. The same month then appears on several bills and is counted more than once.
Check that each bill's rows cover only that bill's billing period. Delete the rows for earlier months. To delete rows across a batch, see Review the data Avarni extracted from your invoices.
Should I delete an upload that read incorrectly?
Not if the same fault repeats across a retailer's bills. Tell your Avarni lead which retailer and which sites are affected. Keep the upload until your Avarni lead confirms the layout is fixed. Avarni uses the files to find the fault.
For one or two bills, correct the rows yourself.