By 1 January 2027, heat meters, heat cost allocators (podzielniki kosztów ogrzewania) and hot water meters installed in Poland before 22 May 2021 must be replaced with devices that can be read remotely. The deadline comes from art. 16 of the Polish act of 20 April 2021, published in the Journal of Laws (Dziennik Ustaw, Dz.U.) 2021 item 868, and it applies to multi-unit buildings (budynki wielolokalowe).
For a property manager (zarządca) or the board of a housing community (wspólnota mieszkaniowa, the owners’ association of a block of flats), this is more than ordering new devices. It also raises the question of where the readings will go after the replacement, who will check them and how they will be tied to the building’s settlement. If each building has a different device supplier, it is easy to end up with several portals and files instead of one list.
Below we explain what the rule says and what it does not say, what is worth doing before the end of the year, and what a system that gathers readings from different sources in one place could look like. We write as a small firm that builds custom software. This is not legal advice; it is worth checking the details of your own situation with an accountant or a lawyer.
What art. 16 actually says
The provision is short. By 1 January 2027, the owner or manager of a multi-unit building replaces heat meters, heat cost allocators or meters measuring domestic hot water that were installed before 22 May 2021 with devices that have a remote reading function. Legal position as of 21.10.2026.
That single sentence gives you four things to keep in view:
- Who it concerns: the owner or manager of a multi-unit building. If you manage such a building or sit on the board of a housing community, it is worth treating this deadline as yours.
- Which devices: heat meters, heat cost allocators and hot water meters. The provision does not list cold water meters.
- Which units: those installed before 22 May 2021. The installation date is what counts.
- By when: by 1 January 2027.
It is easy to shorten this to “by 2027 every meter in the building must be read remotely”. That is not the case. The rule covers heat and hot water, not all water meters.
What to do before the end of the year
Ahead of the deadline, decisions still have to be made, quotes gathered and visits to the flats arranged, and each of these steps takes time. Before you talk to contractors, you need a reliable picture of what is installed in your buildings today.
A list of devices
For every building and unit, record the type of device, its number, the installation date, whether it can be read remotely and who services or reads it. Where the installation date is unknown, mark it as unknown rather than guessing.
Contracts and documents
Review the contracts with the companies that currently supply the devices or allocate heating costs, and work out what your housing community needs in order to decide. Keep installation and replacement reports in one place, linked to the unit, not in one person’s mailbox.
Residents
Replacing allocators and water meters means entering the flats. The sooner residents get the information and proposed dates, the fewer flats will be left for the last days of December.
After the replacement: readings in several places
Remote reading makes one thing easier: a reading no longer requires entering the flat. It does not answer another question, though: where the readings live afterwards and who puts them together.
Suppose a property manager looks after several buildings. In one, the devices belong to company A; in another, to company B; in a third, some flats are still waiting for the replacement. Readings arrive as a portal export, an Excel file or a PDF report, each in a different layout. Someone has to put them into one table, check for gaps and only then prepare the settlement.
It is a typical problem with data kept in spreadsheets: the data exists, but it is scattered across several sources. The more buildings and suppliers, the more manual stitching, and the easier it is to make a mistake that only shows up at settlement time.
How a custom system can help
We do not make meters and we do not replace the companies that install them. What we can do is build a system that collects in one place what comes out of those devices. Below is a proposal, not an off-the-shelf product:
- A device register: building, unit, type of device, number, installation date and a remote reading flag. The list of devices that still need replacing before 1 January 2027 comes from a single filter rather than from leafing through binders.
- Importing readings: from Excel and CSV files, and automatically if the supplier offers an API or a data export. Each supplier has its own layout; the system brings them all to one.
- PDF reports with readings: AI can extract the values and present them for checking. AI can make mistakes, so a person approves each reading before it goes into the settlement.
- Spotting gaps: the system shows units without a reading for a given period and devices that sent no data.
- Roles and permissions: the board, the manager and the accounts team each see what they need.
- Export: summaries in Excel for those who keep working in it.
We have already built some of these pieces, in a different context. In a system for managing a commercial property portfolio, we built an AI module that reads PDF documents, PDF document generation, Excel import and export, and user roles and permissions. A meter register and reading import are, for now, our proposal: we have not built such a module yet.
Once buildings, units and devices sit in one system, adding further data sources is straightforward. One example is suppliers’ invoices, which reach a housing community through KSeF, Poland’s national e-invoicing system; we cover this in KSeF for housing communities and property managers. How to organise work in which AI reads a PDF and a person approves the result is described in our post on AI reading lease agreements.
A checklist for the rest of the year
- List the buildings and units you manage.
- For every unit, record heat meters, heat cost allocators and hot water meters: number, installation date, remote reading yes or no.
- Pick out the devices installed before 22 May 2021 without remote reading. That is your replacement list.
- Mark the units where the installation date still has to be established.
- Review the contracts with device suppliers and with the companies that allocate heating costs.
- Agree a schedule with the housing community board and decide how residents will be informed.
- Find out in what form you will receive readings after the replacement: portal, file, API or PDF.
- Decide where the readings will go and who checks them before the settlement.
Let’s talk about your buildings
If the readings from your buildings come from several directions and someone pieces them together by hand, describe the process to us in a few sentences. We will reply with where it makes sense to start and arrange a free consultation.
How we work is shown in our project for a commercial property portfolio: 11 weeks from June to August 2026, four stages, each closed with an acceptance report, followed by user training and handover of the code. You can put together an approximate cost of the modules in the approximate price builder. It is only approximate; every quote is individual.
Sources
- Polish act of 20 April 2021, Dz.U. 2021 item 868, art. 16, checked 21.10.2026
- Polish Ministry of Finance: KSeF 2.0 training for housing communities and cooperatives, checked 21.10.2026
- ITCompass: a system for managing a commercial property portfolio, checked 21.10.2026
