Landlord FAQ: Sub-Metering in Botswana

Whatever your lease says — that's the whole answer, and it's why the lease wording matters so much. In Botswana the BPC or WUC account typically stays in the property owner's name, so even when the lease says the tenant pays, the utility holds you responsible if they don't. Prepaid sub-metering closes that gap: the tenant genuinely pays for their own usage, before using it, without the account leaving your name.

Yes. A sub-meter doesn't touch or replace the BPC or WUC meter — it sits behind it, on your side of the installation, measuring what each unit uses. You remain the utility's customer; the sub-meter simply governs how your tenants pay you. Thousands of units across Botswana already run this way, and WUC itself is rolling out prepaid water meters across greater Gaborone.

We set tariffs to recover your costs accurately — not to make a profit. One honest wrinkle: BPC and WUC use step tariffs, so when many units share one bulk meter, the building climbs through the price steps faster than a single household would. The effective per-unit rate is therefore genuinely higher than a standalone home's — not because anyone is marking up, but because of how the utility prices bulk consumption. We analyse your actual bills and usage to set a tariff that recovers your true cost, accurately.

The landlord — the meters become part of your building and protect your income, so the investment sits with you. Meters are P300 (electricity) and P850 (water), and under our Free Meter Programme qualifying buildings get the meters free and pay only installation.

The meters typically pay for themselves out of the arrears and losses they stop, which is cleaner than itemising a charge to tenants. Some landlords factor the once-off cost into rent on renewal; we'd advise against a visible meter fee, which invites dispute over something that costs less than one month of one tenant's unpaid utilities.

This is exactly the situation sub-metering exists for. The account stays in your name (utilities generally require this of the owner), but every unit behind it becomes prepaid — so the usage building up on your account is already collected from tenants before it happens. The gap between your name on the bill and their consumption is closed.

Honest answer: rarely in full. You can pursue the debt, but tracing ex-tenants and legal costs usually exceed what's owed, and deposits seldom cover months of arrears. The realistic strategy is prevention — see our full guide on this page.

If the BPC or WUC account is in your name — yes, the utility looks to you regardless of who consumed. That's the uncomfortable core of conventional billing, and it doesn't change until consumption is prepaid.

Under conventional billing: demand letters, deposit deductions, ultimately eviction proceedings — all slow, all adversarial, all while the meter keeps running on your account. Under prepaid there is nothing to refuse: no token, no supply, no debt, no confrontation.

You shouldn't — a landlord cutting a tenant's supply to force payment invites a legal dispute you may lose, whatever the arrears. This is prepaid's quiet advantage: nobody ever disconnects anyone. The meter simply doesn't dispense what hasn't been paid for, and the tenant restores their own supply the moment they top up. The pressure is automatic, impersonal, and clean.

You can't, not in a way everyone accepts — equal splits punish light users, formulas cause fights, and building it into the rent shifts all the risk to you. The only division nobody disputes is a meter per unit. See our full guide on splitting shared meters.

Often a leak — a dripping pipe or running toilet bills you every litre, for months, invisibly. Per-unit metering makes leaks show up fast, because consumption that nobody paid for stands out immediately. Try the leak calculator on our Landlords page to see what a slow leak actually costs.

Disputes need two ingredients: an estimate, and someone else's number. Prepaid removes both — each tenant buys their own tokens against their own meter, so there is no monthly bill to argue about. The dispute doesn't get resolved; it stops existing.

Postpaid sub-metering measures fairly but still collects after consumption — you keep the billing, chasing and arrears risk. Prepaid collects before consumption, which removes the arrears problem rather than measuring it more precisely. For rental property, prepaid wins in almost every case.

P300 for an electricity meter, P850 for a water meter, plus installation. Under our Free Meter Programme, qualifying buildings get the meters free and cover only the installation. The site assessment is free either way.

No. The utility's meter stays exactly where it is, and your account with them continues unchanged. The sub-meter sits behind it, on each unit, governing how tenants pay you — not how you pay the utility.

No — credit lives on the meter, not in the supply. When BPC or WUC restores service, the tenant's balance is exactly where it was.

A small installation — around ten meters — takes about two hours. A larger site like a shopping centre can take a week or more, because work is scheduled around available shut-down windows. Either way, installation is planned around your building and your tenants.

We do — meter faults go straight to our technical team on WhatsApp. Meters are covered by us for the first 12 months. After that a failed meter is a charged replacement — though our meters are robust, and where one fails through no fault of the customer we generally still replace it at our cost. Vandalism or damage is charged.

It means your tenants already understand prepaid — WUC's rollout across greater Gaborone is making pay-before-use the norm for water, as it long has been for BPC electricity. But WUC's meters sit on your main account, not on individual units. Fair per-unit recovery inside your building is still yours to solve — that's what sub-metering does.

Every tariff increase widens the gap between what you're billed and what you recover from tenants — under conventional billing, you absorb the increase until you renegotiate. Under prepaid, changes pass through cleanly: we update tariffs on our platform as soon as BERA publishes them, so your recovery keeps pace without a single awkward conversation.

Yes — this is what makes our setup different. Tenants buy electricity and water tokens on TswanaPay, and can pay rent and levies on the same platform. One place for every property payment, with the landlord seeing every pula move in real time. (Rent is paid on the platform itself, not through the meter.)