1. General information
The following article describes a standard configuration for SME charging with eCarUp. It describes the different models for charging stations at the company headquarters for employees, partners and customers but also at home.
The advantage of the eCarUp platform is that the different use cases of the SME can be solved through one platform and each station can be configured individually if necessary.
Billing via credit card
A very efficient option is billing via credit card, because then the money is automatically transferred from the driver's credit card to the station owner's account. This has two key advantages:
The whole collection process is fully automated, eCarUp transfers the money of the transactions to the station owner's account immediately after they end.
This means that the money is never in the possession of eCarUp AG and all transactions (also e.g. of guests on the visitor parking lots) are within the applicable legal regulations.
ll further information about credit card billing and the legal regulations regarding the transferred credit in our Wiki.
Charging by credit card always results in a 10% commission, regardless of whether an eCarUp Premium license is active or not.
Billing via reporting
The stations can also be charged via the eCarUp reporting tool.
In this case, the stations are stored for all users with a price of 0.- per kWh and 0.- per hour. Thus, the charging processes have no direct cost consequence and there is no billing via the credit card.
At the end of the billing period (end of month, end of quarter, end of half year) a report with the consumption can be created either per station or per (previously created) special user.
Based on these consumption figures, the energy can be charged e.g. on an expense report or another internal billing (outside the eCarUp system).
An eCarUp Premium license is strongly recommended for this use case as otherwise some important features like the maintenance tool, the reports or the extended user management with the user groups are missing.
2. Connect charging stations to the eCarUp backend.
First, the stations need to be connected to the eCarUp backend:
You can find an up-to-date list with all supported charging station models in our wiki
A step by step guide how to connect the stations is also available on our website
In order to transfer money to the account, it must be verified. You can find the information about this under Verify account in eCarUp. We recommend to do this step before or during the installation of the charging stations. Without verification, eCarUp cannot transfer money to the account for legal reasons and no chargeable charges are possible.
Revenues are continuously transferred to the station owner account and can be paid out to any IBAN at any time under the menu item "Account".
3. Set up charging stations
Once the charging stations have been connected to eCarUp, they will appear in the eCarUp account in the dashboard and in the station management.
Basic settings
After that, the stations can be set up by clicking on "Stations" and then "Station management":
Change name and description of the station
Delete stations
Set locations
Edit connections (if more than one)
Define connection types (e.g. type 2, CSS or Chademo)
Define maximum energy (e.g. 22 kW)
Define access (Public, Limited and Private)
Public = all users / Limited = station owners and special users
Private = ONLY station owner or account in which the stations are installed
Set prices for energy and time
Define reserved times
Activate station from web portal
All settings for station owners are summarized in a wiki article.
Create station groups
Important for the management of the charging stations, is the organization in station groups (e.g. by locations or by apartment blocks):
Ready configured, it may look like this:
Create special user
So that the stations can only be activated by the authorized drivers / end customers, the authorizations must be made accordingly. There are two ways to do this:
1. Maintain user groups
In this variant, a user group is created and assigned to the stations. This makes it easy to add or remove a new member from the user group when there is a change of tenant or a new driver. This makes the administrative effort smaller.
The stations are set to the status "limited
A user group is created with all authorized drivers
The user group is assigned to the station group
2. Assigning individual users to the stations.
In this variant, the individual drivers / end users are assigned to their respective stations. Only the respective special user can activate his own charging station. The accounts must be assigned to the stations when there is a change of tenant or a new driver. The account must therefore be actively managed on an ongoing basis.
The stations are set to the status "limited
The correct driver account is activated with the correct price for the station.
A location is stored for the station
4. Label stations
To enable drivers to unlock the stations without an RFID card and with the app, we recommend labeling the stations with a QR code and brief charging instructions. This helps, for example, if a driver loses his RFID card or does not have it with him.
You can find some examples for the labeling.
5. Inform regular users
It is recommended to inform drivers who charge regularly (e.g. employees) about the correct usage of the stations. Drivers must create their own eCarUp account when paying by credit card and provide a valid credit card:
A possible instruction / template to send to drivers can be found here: Template Communication eCarUp End Customers
All functions for drivers are summarized on a separate wiki page
There is also a FAQ for drivers with the most important questions and answers
Drivers can independently add RFID / NFC tags to their account and then use it to unlock the charging station
With eCarUp's flexible system, the administrative burden is minimized. The drivers / end customers can create and manage the accounts independently.
6. Setting up visitor and customer parking spaces.
Charging stations can also be made public with eCarUp and thus charged to anonymous drivers. For this, the stations must be assigned the status "public" in the setup and a location must be set. In addition, the labeling of the charging stations is very important here, since the QR code can also be used for ad-hoc and thus barrier-free charging.
Other prices can also be easily assigned to the visitor parking spaces (see below).
Optionally, the stations can also be published in third-party charging networks via the roaming function. However, this only works if the station is publicly available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You also need to be aware that the station will be found very widely afterwards (in a wide variety of apps and car navigation devices) and thus attract foreign users.
7. Activate visitor and customer parking spaces.
If you have charging stations on parking spaces for visitors and/or customers, there are the following possibilities to activate them for the customers free of charge.
By RFID card: Create an eCarUp account (e.g. muster(at)musterfirma.ch) and assign it to the visitor stations as a special user with a price of 0 per kWh and 0 per h. Add one or more RFID cards to the account. Now the stations can be activated via these RFID / NFC cards free of charge. The customer can take the RFID card e.g. at the reception and charge his car for free.
Activation in the web portal: Stations can also be activated via the web portal. Since the activation is done via the owner account (muster(at)musterfirma.ch), the charging is free of charge and there is no credit card transaction. This variant has the advantage that the customer does not have to run back to the car again.
8. Charging at home
If employees charge the company vehicle at home and the energy for this is to be billed, the following variants are available:
The station is integrated into the company's account (muster(at)musterfirma.ch) and the price is set to 0 per kWh and 0 per hour. The employee can thus charge at home free of charge. At the end of the billing period, an eCarUp report is generated with the consumption (in kWh) and the costs for the charges at home can be settled. This can be done for different drivers/employees accounts in the same account.
The station is installed in the private account of the employee and a price (agreed between employee and company) is stored. The employee activates the station via the business account (where normally a credit card of the company is deposited) at home. Thus, the employee "buys" his electricity to the company and the billing is automated.
9. Error analysis and troubleshooting
With the help of the eCarUp portal, simple faults can be detected and the appropriate measures can be initiated. If stations are grayed out in the dashboard or in the station management and therefore marked as "inactive", they have lost the connection with the backend (longer than 10 minutes) and therefore cannot be used via eCarUp. There are two possible reasons for this:
Internet failure: restore the internet. As soon as the stations reach eCarUp again, the status changes to "available" or blue and can be used normally again.
Power failure: Restore the power supply. As soon as the stations reach eCarUp again, the status changes to "available" or blue and can be used normally again.
With the maintenance tool included in eCarUp Premium, you can track the communication between the charging station and the backend and do a deeper error analysis.
If the error is deeper, you have to contact the person responsible for the project (e.g. executing electrician).
Practical tip: In order to test or check the functionality of stations on site, an account can be created for the technical service or another responsible person on site (e.g. hauswart[at]musterhaus.ch). This account can be deposited at the stations as a special user with a price of 0.- per kWh and 0.- per h and can thus carry out tests without incurring costs.