Company settings for unlocking data

Users can specify their default policy for what data is unlocked for all newly created customers via the settings page in the Bayou dashboard. Here's what the relevant section looks like:

• What historical bills should we unlock for new customers? Options are:
  1. All (all historical data made available by the utility will be fetched)
  2. A predefined time period measured in months. Example (1 month, 12 months, 24 months) NOTE: if you choose this option, bills in the current month will not be unlocked, only past months)
  3. The most recent bills for each of the customer's accounts
  4. None (No historical data made available by the utility will be fetched)
• If you choose option b or c, you can choose how many months, or how many bill periods per account, respectively.
• Should we continuously unlock new bills for existing customers?
  • Enable: On an ongoing basis, all new customer data will be unlocked by default
    • This means as a customer receives a new utility bill and corresponding data, that data will be fetched and unlocked
  • Disable continuous data: No new customer data will be unlocked on an ongoing basis by default
• Which meters should we unlock on each bill?
  • Allows automatic unlocking to be limited to only gas or electric meters. Applies to all of the above settings.

Data provided for locked bills

Here's an example locked bill object:

{
  "event": "new_bill",
  "object": {
    "id": 167449,
    "external_id": null,
    "status": "locked",
    "customer_id": 9452,
    "customer_external_id": null,
    "billed_on": "2024-08-31",
    "billing_period_from": "2024-08-01",
    "billing_period_to": "2024-08-31",
    "utility": "speculoos_power",
    "account_number": "498154477303083",
    "meters": [
      {
        "id": "G3048593",
        "status": "locked",
        "type": "gas",
        "billing_period_from": "2024-08-01",
        "billing_period_to": "2024-08-31",
        "address": {
          "line_1": "20 West 34th Street",
          "line_2": null,
          "city": "New York",
          "state": "NY",
          "postal_code": "10118",
          "postal_code_suffix": null,
          "country": "US"
        },
        "tariff": "Residential - Gas",
        "additional_attributes": {
          "service_number": "8379358118"
        }
      },
      {
        "id": "E4490291",
        "status": "locked",
        "type": "electric",
        "billing_period_from": "2024-08-01",
        "billing_period_to": "2024-08-31",
        "address": {
          "line_1": "20 West 34th Street",
          "line_2": null,
          "city": "New York",
          "state": "NY",
          "postal_code": "10118",
          "postal_code_suffix": null,
          "country": "US"
        },
        "tariff": "Residential - Electric",
        "additional_attributes": {
          "service_number": "5516253503"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Unlocking data from an individual bill object

At any time the default company settings for unlocked data can be over-ridden for an individual bill object by its unique identifier.

Via API

This API call outlines how to unlock an individual bill.

Via the Bayou dashboard (no code)

To unlock any given bill, the user can simply click the gray "Unlock this bill" button.