How Balance Forecast demystifies energy payments

Check your Balance Forecast

This account tool maps out your energy balance over the next year, so you can see the impact of raising or lowering your Direct Debit. You can use it to test out different payment amounts, decide on one you're comfortable with, and clearly see what your balance should look like in a year's time.

Balance Forecast is available for customers who pay by monthly Direct Debit and are on a standard Fixed or Flexible tariff.

The papers legitimately called it "hot stuff", but we'd love you to try it out for yourself and see if it helps you plan ahead a little better.

The majority of customers use more energy in winter and less in summer, but prefer to set up an even monthly payment throughout the year. That means it's normal for your account to build up credit in the warmer months to see you through the colder months when the heating comes on.

You can plug different monthly payment amounts in at the top to see where they'll take your balance in the future. If the payment is too low to cover what you're using and build winter credit, you'll see your balance line fall below zero. Too high? You'll see your credit gradually accumulate. If your Direct Debit is set correctly, your balance should even out over the course of the year.

Once you've decided on a payment amount, you can change your Direct Debit yourself online. If you've chosen an amount that could lead you to build up debit, we just ask that you speak to our team to change it.

How do we calculate your Direct Debit?

It’s taken a vast and careful effort to calculate and develop a fair way to calculate Direct Debit payments and automatically keep balances in check for millions of customers. We know how important it is to get it right. We process about 8 million payments a month and we take the responsibility incredibly seriously.

We think it's most important to put customers in control, and give them all the info to make their own decision about what they should pay. That's why we made Balance Forecast. We’d love to see the same transparency from other suppliers.

If you'd like the detail, we've written at length about how we work out what you should pay.

How Balance Forecast came to be

In 2022, when the energy crisis hit hard, many suppliers began suggesting customers increase their payments. It led to a lot of headlines suggesting suppliers were increasing payments by too much. So we came up with a way to show our customers our working...

A few weeks later, we launched Balance Forecast for anyone on one of our standard tariffs who pays by monthly Direct Debit. (Smart tariffs like Agile Octopus involve more complex energy consumption patterns and pricing, so aren't included in Balance Forecast.)

Let us know how you find Balance Forecast by tweeting us @OctopusEnergy or however else you usually like to speak to us.