OVO Energy Live billing platform and monthly summaries - What do I need to know?

I have being making the payments that OVO for the full debit but when I went into my account today I had a much larger bill than expected. When I started going back through my payments I discovered that I was not paying off the full balance as I had thought and there appears to be a further balance running in the background which keeps increasing. Has anyone else experienced this issue?

Sorry I'm not clear here, are we talking about Direct Debits? And are you on variable or fixed tariff?

I think that you are saying that your recommended Direct Debit (or payment if not on DDs) was more than your usage, but that you had a debit balance over and above your usage.

And that you were only paying for the usage.

Is that correct?

In that case your recommended payments (direct debits) would be how much you need to pay each month to cover your expected usage and also get the debit balance to zero at 31st March if you are on Standard Variable Tariff (SVT) or at your plan end date if you are on a fixed tariff.

So if you haven't been paying the ‘recommended’ amount that recommendation will grow each month because there  are less payments due until the next 31st March (or the fixed plan end).

It isn't the debit balance that is increasing; it's the number of monthly payments left to get it to zero that is reducing.

Having all SVT accounts expected to be zero balance on 31st March (rather than 12 months from whenever you look) can make things look odd - when you also have a debit balance.

As you reduce that debit balance then they start to look more like expected from what you use over a year  - until the debit has gone and you are just paying for what you use.

You may be seeing the effect of ‘live billing’. Do you have a smart meter? If so, you have the option to have meter readings taken every day or only once a month. If not, are you submitting a reading each month?

Live billing means that the account is updated each day, so you know precisely how you’re doing and you avoid unpleasant shocks when the bill finally arrives. This means that the bill will show the balance as it was at the end of the billing period, but your online account shows today’s balance. The difference will be the cost of the energy you’ve used since the beginning of the period. If you don’t have a smart meter, the usage will be estimated, but standing charges will inexorably be applied daily. 

You may find it simpler (and cheaper) to pay by Direct Debit; this scheme estimates how much you’re expected to spend over the next year, and works out how much you would have to pay each month to keep the account healthy.  

Hey @mf.inv,

You’re in good hands with our volunteers @Firedog and @Nukecad. They have already made a great start in trying to gather some more information from you so we can better understand what type of billing issue you have. If you have the time to update the thread with more context about your issue, we will see what the best methods to help you are.

You can always contact our Support Team, who can access the account and give you the most accurate information for your questions. As we don’t have access here, we can simply offer help and support to the right resources. 

Here are some articles that may help

• Meter Reading Disputes - What are they? F.A.Q.

• What are all the charges that make up my energy bill? VLOG

Yesterday my balance was at £383.61, today my direct debit was paid in £125 my balance now shows at £513,63 rather than 514.61. I know it's no much but If they do this to every customer they're making a fortune besides the fact the balance shown when the bills are sent show something different - would someone at ovo like to explain 🤔 

While I can’t quite follow your arithmetic, I guess that you’re seeing OVO’s ‘live billing’ at work. Your (positive) balance will fall from one day to the next, to reflect the cost of energy used that day and the day’s standing charges. Read about this here: OVO Energy Live billing platform and monthly summaries - What do I need to know? | The OVO Forum

If this doesn’t explain the discrepancy you’re seeing, you’ll have to give us a bit more information (meter readings, plan details) if we’re to help you unravel it.

As Firedog says it will be the 'live balance’ that you can see on your OVO account.
(Actually it’s not fully ‘live’ but updates daily).
It's a bit like looking at your bank account online, you can see what has been debited or credited to your ongoing balance each day. Your statement/bill is still issued monthly.

Your numbers as you have given them don't add up though.

You say that you had a credit balance of £383.61 and added £125 which would give a new balance of £508.61 and not £514.61.

£514.61 is +£6.00 higher than the numbers that you have told us, that’s £6 in your favour.
(Has something else been credited to your account? Perhaps a £6 Power Move reward?)

Anyhow -
From the new (£514.61) balance you then have to subtract an amount for your energy usage and standing charge for that day, to give the balance for the next day..
The £0.98 difference that you show there seems reasonable for a low electricity users consumption and standing charge for 1-day.

PS. My own ‘live balance’ currently changes by slightly more that that each day, between £1.00 and £2.50 depending on how much electricity I’ve used each day.

Type error balance was £389.61 and it doesn't go down each day it changes when they issue the bill when I do a meter read - don't have a smart meter 

They use estimations for their ‘live billing’ when you don’t have daily readings so the balance will reduce as has been indicated earlier

That’s more like it!

I’m afraid I don’t know how live billing works if there’s not a smart meter involved. AS Nukecad points out, it could be that the balance is updated because a payment was received and the difference is simply the standing charge for the day.

Your bills will tell you whether they’re based on actual readings or on estimates; if the closing reading is an estimate, it could be that you submitted a reading on or before the last day of the billing period. That’s because OVO estimates what you would have used from the day of the reading up to the end of the period. You can avoid this by always submitting a monthly reading in the morning of the first day of the billing period; this is because manual readings are treated as if they had been made the preceding midnight. A reading submitted on the first day of the next period will thus be used both as the closing reading for the period it refers to and as the opening reading for the next period. If your last bill ran from, say, 26 April to 25 May, the monthly reading should be submitted on 26 June (regardless of what you may have been used to or what you read in the app, in the web account or in outdated help articles).

You can always submit readings more often, e.g. weekly, which would help to keep your daily balance more accurate. And no, OVO isn’t diddling you out of a little bit each time you look at your account. I hope we’ve managed to explain how it all works.

My meter situation is a bit odd, but it does help show the differences between having smart or dumb meters - because I have one of each.

1- My electricity meter is smart and sends in my electricity usage reading daily.
2- My Gas meter is not smart and so I send in readings from the gas meter ocassionally.

1- My live balance includes my smart metered electricity use each day.
2- My live balance does not include any amount at all for gas usage until I do send a new gas reading.

1 & 2- My live balance does include both of the daily standing charges for electricity and gas. (That’s £0.80 total for both SC’s on my currrent Fixed Loyalty tariff).

Which shows that the standing charges are being included daily, smart meter or not.

So, if you check your own plan/tariff what is your daily standing charge? the total for both electricity and gas if you have both.
Is it that £0.98? If not then how much is it?

Hi @Sutty61 

As some of our volunteers have already touched on the balance isn’t always necessarily the bill amount and that’s why we always say to look at the bill amount when paying.

The live-billing platform is ideal if you’ve got a smart meter set to send us readings either daily or half-hourly. We’ll then adjust your balance based on actual usage figures each day at midnight. If you’ve not yet got a smart meter installed this might be the perfect time to take the leap.

Without a smart meter, we’ll only be able to estimate your usage in between readings, and when you submit a reading, we’ll be able to update that live balance. Similarly when we issue a bill, it’ll adjust that balance amount as we’ve likely estimated the usage since your last reading if it wasn’t on the day of the bill.

I’m on a variable rate plan .1 because OVO ‘s direct debit offer far exceeds the amount of energy I use for the last 4years.So.  looking at my account on the app which shows a nice healthy balance of £36+.But when I go to charges and payments my account shows a balance of -£1.72. Most misleading as I like to keep up to date with my account 

I’m much the same as malcolmchambers paying my energy bill monthly on demand so there is notthis build up of credit caused by a flat rate Direct Debit. A variable DD like with telecoms suppliers would be much better but OVO Energy des not currently offer this.

With regards the descrepancy on balances this may be due to credit showing from the last bill cycle to the amount of energy used since. In this case it would be £36.00 + £1.72 = £37.72 giving the -£1.72 balance owing.

Hey @DavidWSR @malcolmchambers 

It sounds like what you’re both seeing is the live balance updating.

Can I ask do you both have smart meters that are in communication with us? If so, these will be updating the live balance but if you’re paying on demand of the bill instead of Direct Debit, you only need to pay what’s instructed on the bill when you receive it.

The live-billing platform is ideal if you’ve got a smart meter set to send us readings either daily or half-hourly. We’ll then adjust your balance based on actual usage figures each day at midnight. If you’ve not yet got a smart meter installed this might be the perfect time to take the leap.

Without a smart meter, we’ll only be able to estimate your usage in between readings, and when you submit a reading, we’ll be able to update that live balance. Similarly when we issue a bill, it’ll adjust that balance amount as we’ve likely estimated the usage since your last reading if it wasn’t on the day of the bill.

I’m sorry for any confusion being caused, I hope this clears things up a little for you both but let me know if you’ve got any other questions.🙂

Yup got a smart meter.

Can someone explain if you have current balance of a few hundred pounds on your balance on the last billing day You then send in readings and you then pay that amount also on the last billing day separately from your credit Why does the balance after paying on that day go to Zerro  Balance and the previous credit of few hundred pounds completely disappears 

Oh dear, here we go again. Your descriptions of what’s happening with your account don’t really help us understand what is actually going on. Could you please share screenshots of your billing details pages, for the current period and the one before that. Include everything from Balance changes down to Payments. If payments you’ve made aren’t dated, add a note saying what date they were made on.

Let’s see if we can simplify this question without the complexities you have a positive balance  X amount. You pay the exact bill that you receive after your readings  All previous bills paid precisely as you receive your bill on last billing day. So if you have a positive balance and you pay your exact bill you still have your positive balance ( you haven’t used your balance) the bills have been paid now and previous it therefore stands to reason that the positive balance should be still show as today’s balance as previously ( irrespective of the technical workings of the billing system) unless there’s something wrong with the billing system 

I don’t know what your bills look like, so I don’t know what you mean when you say “You pay the exact bill that you receive ...”. That’s why I asked for some screenshots to help us understand what you’re talking about.

I pay by direct debit, so it’s not quite the same. I don’t get a bill (a demand for payment), just a statement of account. This is what it looks like:

The billing details page has a bit more detail, so it’s easier to see what’s going on. 

Again, I’ll point out that “the positive balance should be still show as today’s balance as previously” is a misunderstanding. If there are no intermediate readings, OVO might estimate your usage from the start of the billing period to today and show its corresponding cost, including the daily standing charge, so you see (an approximation of) your account’s state today. They will be deducted from the opening balance to arrive at the current one. 

You say live billing, yet since 2022 when i had a smart meter installed, it didn’t even manage to show my usage properly for 2 years let alone the “live billing” that you are proudly bragging about? Ovo then in a very obvious manner changed all the old bills to suddenly reflect my actually usage beginning of this year, leaving me racked up with a huge thousands of pounds bill. When I then call to raise a complaint about this, i keep being gaslit into thinking the bills were reflecting the correct usage all along, whilst all my attempts to contact ovo and submit readings were ignored. Saw at least one other forum article of others complaining about their usage not reflecting in the ovo app or bills; this is what makes it frustrating, smart meter engineer appointment to fix the issue then gets cancelled on me last me, then today i chatted to an agent who just kept saying its not in their control and there is nothing he could do about it, the question is , when will this get sorted and why it hasn’t been sorted for more than 2 years, cause that’s how long it took for my bill to reflect my correct usage and yet recently it started lagging behind on usage again, i can’t be blamed for not contacting ovo cause that’s what i literally did earlier and chatted to their agent and they said they can’t do anything about it!

Hi @pinkfloyd198,

I’m really sorry for the issues you’ve been experiencing, that’s definitely not the experience we want for our customers.

I’m going to have our Forum_Support team reach out to you so they can help you further with this. Look out for a private message here soon: https://forum.ovoenergy.com/inbox/overview

thanks Shads, they can’t have excuse now cause i have requested chat log with agent to be emailed to me so that I keep as evidence that I did reach out to let ovo know

Hi @pinkfloyd198,

I’ve responded to you via this thread forum.ovoenergy.com/my-account-140/meter-readings-not-updating-account-balance-15454