AMR rollouts and meter exchange programs generate a data gap between the field work and the billing system. The exchange happens correctly. The documentation — meter serial, old reading, new tag ID — gets captured in a way that makes sense in the truck cab but doesn't survive the handover to the operations team in a usable format. The billing dispute that surfaces six months later is a documentation failure, not a field failure.
The Tagging Layer
The change_tag? flag with old_tag_id and new_tag_id is the component that most field documentation systems underspec. An AMR-capable meter installation has two serial numbers that matter: the meter's own new_meter_no and the radio transponder's new_tag_id. They're separate devices, sometimes installed together and sometimes replaced independently. A tag replacement without a meter change is a common maintenance activity — corrosion, failed transponder, upgrade to a newer communication protocol — and it needs its own tracked record path rather than being conflated with the meter exchange record.
When the billing system queries an AMR reader for a property's consumption, it's querying by tag ID. If the old tag ID wasn't deactivated and the new tag ID wasn't registered because the exchange documentation only captured the meter serial number, the AMR system either receives no reads or, worse, double-reads if the old transponder is still broadcasting. old_tag_id is the deactivation reference; new_tag_id is the registration reference.
On-Site Evidence at Scale
A meter exchange program across 400 properties in a week generates 400 individual exchange records. Without a systematic field capture process, the verification of whether each exchange was done correctly relies on the installer's memory and the billing system's eventual anomaly detection — which catches errors months after the fact, after incorrect bills have already been issued.
lat_long converts a street address into a verifiable coordinate. Two properties on the same street, both listed as "37 Elmwood Road," are distinguishable by GPS coordinates when the address alone creates ambiguity. For properties in rural areas, unmapped subdivisions, or industrial estates with informal addressing, coordinates are the only reliable property identifier.
pit or other obstruction is the field that makes the exchange record a maintenance trigger. A pit with a cracked lid, a meter box filled with soil or gravel, a shared pit access blocked by a structure — these conditions are noted at the time of the exchange and feed directly into a maintenance backlog rather than being verbally reported to a supervisor who may or may not log them. The comment field captures anything else: abnormal meter readings suggesting a leak upstream, site access issues that delayed the job, customer contact during the exchange.
installer signature with complete closes each record with accountability and status. An incomplete record flagged at end-of-shift is a job that needs follow-up. A complete record with a signature is an auditable exchange entry that supports contractor payment verification and regulatory compliance reporting for the exchange program.