This guide explains how to set up your charge point site in Monta and make the charge points available for EV drivers to use!
Whether you have purchased Monta directly, or you are being set up by a service provider, this guide is a useful read for you. Even if your account is being operated by a service provider, we strongly recommend getting familiar with these fundamental actions and concepts.
Please note that this guide assumes that your charge points have already been installed and connected to the internet.
1. Your Parking space in Monta
In the Monta universe, everything is tied by the central entity of Team. Your parking space is represented as a Team in Monta. In the Team, you can:
- Add and connect your charge points
- Manage the pricing for EV drivers using your charge points
- Invite and grant access to an Admin, who can manage the pricing and troubleshoot of charge points
- Manage a virtual Team Wallet, where all payments and transactions go
- Control the charge point access to EV drivers, as well as charge point availability
2. Fill out your company’s information
Begin by finding the Team and filling out your company information in the Team settings. These company details will be used for charging receipts when EV drivers charge on your charge points.
- If you are using a Trial account, then your account will already have a Team created.
- If you purchased Monta via a service provider, they should already have created a Team for you.
- If you need to create a Team, here is how you can do this.
3. Connect your charge point(s) to your Monta account
When a charge point is connected to Monta, this gives access to EV drivers with or without a Monta account to charge on it. Furthermore, the payment for the charge will be collected in your Team’s Wallet. The process to connect a charge point to Monta consists of 3 steps: Physical installation, Integration with Monta and Pairing to the Team.
In this section, we are focusing on the third step, where you connect the charge point to your Monta account. In this process, you need to consider the following:
Charge point access – If you want EV drivers to be able to charge straight away, select Public.
Set charge point active – We recommend to switch the toggle on, so you can experience the full functionality of the charge point, like paid charging. If you want to test at first, you can leave the toggle off.
If you have a big parking space, you can use the bulk option to connect many charge points at once. When the charge point shows as Active, it is time to move to the next step.
4. Set up charge point access and pricing
Now it’s time to decide the visibility of your charge points. That depends on the size of your parking space and how much interest you want to drive there.
We recommend setting the charge point to Public visibility, which will give access to EV drivers to charge. To make the charge points visible to all Monta users, you should enable the charge point to show on the Monta map. When the charge point is set to Public, you also need to create a Public Price Group, which is what the EV drivers will pay when charging.
If you want to drive more traffic to your parking space, we encourage you to enable Roaming, as well. This will make your charge points available on different Roaming platforms, such as Hubject, Google Maps, etc. You can customize how much EV drivers are pay when they access your charge points via a Roaming platform, by creating a Roaming Price Group. Please note that Roaming is only available for Business and Enterprise plans.
5. How do EV drivers charge on your charge points
EV drivers can charge on your charge points, when you set their availability to Public.
Monta users can find your charge point on the Monta map and start charging via Monta Charge. If you have enabled Roaming, they can start charging via other apps, as well.
If you have many charge points at the parking space, we recommend to purchase and connect QR Stickers to the charge point. This will aid the EV drivers to identify the charge point, if there are many in a row. All the driver needs to do is scan the sticker and start charge, even if they do not have a Monta account.
6. Managing funds and payments
Monta uses it’s own Wallet system. Your parking space has a virtual Team Wallet, where all payments for charging are collected. You also use the Wallet to cover expenses for Monta services (i.e. transaction fees) or services provided by a solution provider (subscription purchases).
You can withdraw the revenue from charging at any point to your company’s bank account.
If you have Business or Enterprise Monta plan, and your company is VAT registered, you can request to handle your billing by Monta invoicing. Every invoice comes with a csv file, which contains all your Wallet transactions within the month.
7. Test your setup
Great job! You’re ready to get started now!
We recommend testing your setup by performing a few charges. Once you understand how the system works, you can try more advanced setups using the links we’ve included below.
Feel free to check our Help Center for detailed guides and troubleshooting tips.
If you need help from Monta Support, just go to support.monta.com and create a ticket. Our Support Team will get back to you as soon as possible!
8. Advanced section
Invite an Administrator to the Team
You should invite a person to manage the pricing, exports, withdrawing money, and the charge points of the Team. You can invite them with a phone number or an email. If they do not have a Monta account yet, they will be invited to create one. Make sure to assign them an Admin role in the Team.
Create additional charging fees
You can apply different additional fees to charging, such as a starting fee, charging fee, minute fee or idle fee. When you create the fee, you are able to apply it on specific charge points. With an idle fee, for example, you can make sure that EV drivers are incentivized to unplug and remove their cars after the charge is done, so the parking space is vacated.
Limit charge point access
If you want to limit the charge point access, during some time of the day, or week, you can create a Scheduled visibility, which switches the access between Public and Private. This is useful, if your parking space closes at night, for example. If that is the case, we strongly encourage you to put a note on the charge point, which will show in the Monta map, when the EV drivers find your charging site.
Please note that when the charge points are set to Private visibility, only Team Members can use them to charge.
Add a payment terminal
For big parking space with many charge points, we recommend to attach a payment terminal, which can be used for initiating a charge and a contactless payment method. Monta works with several types payment terminals, for example Payter. You will need to configure the terminal and connect it to the Team Wallet.
When the EV driver arrives at your parking space, they can plug in their car to the charge point and use the payment terminal for contactless payment, which will initiate the charge.
Set up Load Balancing
If you have a lot of charge points and a limited amount of power output, we recommend setting up Load Balancing on your parking space. That way you can manage how power is distributed among your charge points. You can see if your charge points support Load Balancing here. Please note that this feature is available to Business and Enterprise plans.