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 in the crisis.

The majority of customers use more energy in Winter and less in Summer, but pay for their energy via 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. 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.

New on Balance Forecast: Crystal Ball mode 🔮

Version 2 of Balance Forecast aims to help.

Crystal Ball mode helps customers on Flexible Octopus get a sense of what the expected price cap increase and government rebate will mean for their energy costs. As the name implies, it should be taken with a grain of salt because it's too soon to know what actual prices will look like in October and January and the nature of the government rebate could change at any time. But we're using the most up to date information and predictions from industry experts to help you plan ahead and navigate through the crisis.

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 3 million payments a month – that’s around 100,000 payments a day – 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

Following the April Price Cap increasing, 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 v1 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.