EV Charging
Billing and access control for workplace EV charging
2 July 2026 · 6 min read
Chargers without an access and billing policy become a free perk with an unpredictable bill. The back office is what turns them into managed infrastructure.
Decide the policy before the hardware
Who is allowed to charge: staff, visitors, fleet vehicles, the public, or some combination? Is charging free, at cost, or at a margin? Are there time limits to stop a bay being occupied all day once a vehicle is full? These answers determine the specification, not the other way round.
What OCPP compliance buys you
The Open Charge Point Protocol lets any compliant charger talk to any compliant management platform. Specifying it means you are not locked into one manufacturer's software for the life of the asset, and you can change back office provider without changing hardware.
Insist on it in writing. It is the difference between infrastructure you own and infrastructure you rent from whoever installed it.
Reimbursement that survives an audit
For company vehicles charging at a workplace, per-session records showing driver identity, timestamps and kilowatt hours delivered are what make reimbursement defensible. RFID cards or app authentication tie the session to a person, and monthly exports reconcile against your energy invoice.
The same records make it straightforward to recharge costs to departments or to a fleet operator.
Uptime is a policy choice too
Remote monitoring should alert you to a fault before a driver reports it. Ask what response times your maintenance cover actually commits to, whether firmware updates are included, and who holds spares. A charge point that is down for three weeks is worse than no charge point, because people planned around it.