In the following, we go through a step-by-step guide for the most common use cases for Housing Associations, which covers connecting the charge points and giving access to the associations’ residents to the charge points. Optionally, you will learn how to set the charge points to public availability, if you wish to offer them to the public for a fee.
Finally, you will learn how to withdraw your funds from Monta.
Please note that the guide below assumes that you already have charge points installed, connected to power and internet, and that you want to set everything up in Monta yourselves.
Following the steps below in a Trial account is recommended.
1. Intro to Monta concepts
In the Monta universe, everything is tied by the central entity of Team. Most other functionalities are tied to the Team itself. Your Housing Association is represented as a Team. In the Team you can:
- Add and connect your charge points
- Create Price Groups for your residents to pay when charging on these charge points
- Invite Housing Association members to charge on charge points
- Manage a virtual Team Wallet, where all payments and transactions go
- Control the charge point access to EV drivers
2. Create a Team
As mentioned above, in Monta, Teams are front and center. As such, your account needs to have a Professional Team. If you are using a Trial account, then your account will already have a Team created.
With that in mind, please follow our Help Center guide and make sure that the settings, such as company info, address, etc., are correctly set up: Update Team company information
3. Add & Connect Charge Point(s)
Nice! Now that you have a Team created, the next step is to add and connect charge points.
If you’re not certain if your charge points are supported by Monta (they most probably are!), make sure to double-check on this page: Monta Supported Charge Points. If you click on your charge point in that list, you can also find an Installation Guide for it, should it be needed.
To add one or more Charge Points, please follow our Help Center Guide: Add and connect a charge point
While doing so, please make note of the (1) types of availability: Private (your residents) or Public (anyone), (2) showing it on Monta Charge and partner apps to all of our users, and setting the Charge Points as active. All of these are detailed in the Guide above.
You can set charge points as active in the Trial account, and you will only have to pay for them when you upgrade the Trial.
4. Create and Apply Price Groups
The Price Group feature allows you to set the charging price for EV drivers that want to use your charge points. Please note that if you are planning on keeping charge points private to your residents, then you need to create a Member Price Group, while if you are planning on having charge points Publicly available, then a Public price group is necessary.
This Help Center Guide is a great starting point to understand Price Groups: Price Groups for EV Drivers in Monta
At the end of the guide for Price Groups, you can find further links, depending on the set you wish to set up. Please follow the appropriate Guide and set up your Price Group(s).
Please make special note that the Price Groups need to be applied to Charge Points (if public availability) or to Members (if private availability) for them to function as desired.
5. Invite Members to Team
Once you’ve done the steps above, you now have a Team, Charge Points, and Pricing set up for your charge point setup.
The next step is to give residents access to the charge points, which is done by inviting them to your Team as EV drivers. Please follow this Help Center guide to invite members: Inviting Team Members
Of the 3 different ways of inviting members, we recommend method #3: Sharing a Code. In order to minimize admin work, we recommend enabling Auto Accept Join Requests, which is detailed in the last section of the guide linked above.
Simply send them the code, and they will be able to join your team with Monta Charge. Once they have downloaded Monta Charge, here is a useful guide that shows their side of joining your team: How to join a Team
6. How your residents can charge
After joining your Team, your residents technically will have access to charging. Most residents won’t be existing Monta users, so we’re attaching a couple of more links below.
We recommend forwarding your residents these two links from our Help Center: Getting started with Monta Charge & How to charge on a Team Charge Point
7. Managing funds and payments
Monta uses its own Wallet system. Every time a resident makes a paid charge, they will pay into your Team’s Wallet.
By default, you pay your monthly fee for using Monta through the Wallet, automatically. This also means that if your residents aren’t paying for charging into your Wallet, you’ll need to add funds manually to make sure your account doesn’t get suspended.
If you wish to switch to invoicing, please note that this is only available to Business and Enterprise customers with a VAT registered company. If you are on a Pro plan, you will not be able to request invoicing.
Here is a guide on requesting invoicing if you are on a Business or Enterprise plan: Request to enable Team invoicing
You can withdraw funds at any point in time from the Monta Wallet: Withdrawing funds from the Team Wallet
Good job! You’re now good to go. We recommend testing the setup with a couple of charges. As you’ve probably figured out by now, our Help Center is quite extensive and can help you get quick help with guides and troubleshooting Q&As.
If everything is to your satisfaction, you can upgrade your Trial account to a paid plan.
We’re adding a few more guides below that are intended for advanced setups. Most Housing Associations will not need these settings, but we are adding them for the ones that do.
Advanced section
1. Member fees
This is a monthly fee that you request from your residents, in case you have an agreement to supply the EV charging availability. Make sure you communicate with your residents before you set this up, so you won’t have surprised residents.
We recommend creating and applying a Member fee.
2. Restrict access to specific Charge Points
This advanced feature is used if there is an agreement about which specific charge points certain residents should have access to. This can be done if you have 10 charge points, and you want 8 of them to stay Private and the last 2 to be Public.
It can also be if you for example have an understanding that residents 1 & 2 have access to charge point 1, residents 3 & 4 have access to charge points 2, or similar
The above is detailed in our Help Center Guide: Allocate charge points to existing team members
3. Charge Point Troubleshooting
While we hope it doesn’t happen at all, Charge Points sometimes have issues and become unavailable or stuck.
Here is a handy guide in our Help Center to manage most issues: How to troubleshoot a charge point