Understand the charges on my bill
You can choose to have all the details included on your Telstra bill, or choose to get a summary. Follow this guide to understand your bill so you’ll know how much you’re paying and what you’re paying for.
The first page of your bill is an overview of your bill. It contains your personal details, account details, how much you need to pay and when you need to pay it by. Above your total you’ll also find any late fees that may be owing. And at the bottom of the page there’s a list of all the ways you can pay your bill.
- Your Telstra Bill: On the first page of your bill, on the right-hand side, your bill lists your Previous Balance, Previous Bill and Payments made.
- Services: Under ‘Your Telstra Bill’ each service you have is labelled in a different colour that matches the itemised charges on the pages that follow. The information is also represented in words and includes a sub total amount to pay for each service you have.
- Total due and due date: This is the total amount due including GST and the date it is due. Any outstanding amounts payable would also be listed here.
- Contact us: If you have any questions about your bill, our contact details are listed here.
- Payment options: Located at the bottom of the first page of your bill is a list of the different ways you can pay your bill: Direct Debit, Online or phone, My Telstra app, BPAY® or Post billpay. Find out more about how you can pay your bill.
The second page of your bill shows your bill summary. It includes a graph of your bill history showing your charges this month and the past 12 months. It also shows your previous bill balance, the amount paid, the date paid and the method of payment.
Under your bill history graph is a breakdown list of your charges and credits for each service you have. Including usage summaries inside your plan and outside of it.
Listed from the top, you’ll find:
- Service details: The phone number the charges relate to.
- Plan details: The plan name or package details your service is connected to.
- Plan description: May include information about the value or benefit you are receiving from your Telstra package or plan.
- Charges outside of your plan (if relevant): A summary of charges you've incurred by using features or services not included in your plan.
- Bill subtotal: This shows the total for each service you have.
- Total: This is the overall total of the amount due including GST.
If you've chosen to receive a detailed bill instead of a summary bill, your bill gives you an itemised account of all your recent activity over multiple pages. Any usage included in your plan will not be shown.
Your itemised account displays data usage for the month and any charges you've incurred by using features or services not included in your plan. Your bill charges are also itemised on your online bill.
On your bill, you will find:
- Shared mobile data: listing the date, service number, volume of data used, gross amount in dollars and nett amount in dollars.
- Mobile service number calls: listing the date of the call, the time, the type, the number called, the duration, gross amount in dollars, nett amount in dollars.
- Mobile service number messages: listing the date of the message, the time, the type, the location, the number called, the duration, gross amount in dollars, nett amount in dollars.
Internet charges are not shown in this section.
You can find more information about your detailed bill by watching our video on how to understand billing charges.
How to understand bill charges
Video content description
A video showing how to read your mobile bill overview, understand your bill summary and usage.
Narrator: In this video, we'll show you how to understand your mobile bills, so you'll know how much you're paying and what you're paying for.
We'll show you how to read your bill overview, how to understand your bill summary, and how to make sense of your usage.
The first page of your bill provides an overview of your bill. It includes your personal details, your account details, how much you need to pay, and when you need to pay it by.
Above your total, you'll be able to see any late fees that are owing.
And at the bottom of the page you'll find a list of all the ways you can pay your bill.
The next section of your bill is your bill summary. Here you'll find your bill history in the form of a bar chart.
And below that a breakdown of your services, including usage summaries within your plan and outside of it, whether you made any calls to numbers not included in your plan, such as phone numbers beginning with 1-900 or 1-3, any purchases related to your account, such as additional data packs, subscription services and downloads, any credit or debit adjustments, and the subtotals of your bill.
If you've chosen to receive a detailed bill rather than a summary bill, your bill will also include a rundown of all phone calls, SMS charges and data usage for the month.
Under the 'Calls' heading, you'll see listed by date, all the phone calls you made during the billing period, including the number you called, the length of the call and how much that call cost.
These days most text messages are sent using data, however if you sent a text as a traditional SMS, it will be listed below the heading 'Messages'.
And finally your data usage, which is everything you look at online, anything you download, and most, if not all of the text messages you sent using data.
Under the heading 'Data' you'll see a list of how many kilobytes of data you used each day.
If you're on a plan that includes data and calls you'll only see dollar values in the Gross column.
The cost of calls and data usage will only appear in the Net column if you've gone over your plan allowance, or the calls are made outside your plan.
And that's it! We've shown you how to read your bill overview, understand your bill summary, and make sense of your phone, SMS and data usage.
If you'd like to review any of these steps, simply replay from the time shown.
For more help, visit telstra.com/support
More about my bill
There are a few ways you can find your account balance:
On your Telstra bill
On the top right-hand corner of your Telstra bill on page 1, under the heading ‘Your Telstra bill’.
In the My Telstra app
- Sign in to My Telstra app with your Telstra ID
- Go to Payments
- The balance will be displayed for each of your services
- To view your balance in more detail, select your service.
In My Telstra in a browser
- Sign in to My Telstra using your Telstra ID
- On the homepage, your account balance will be displayed in Account overview.
Important:
- Balance shown doesn’t include unbilled usage or credits applied since your last bill
- Payments can take up to 48 hours to show in My Telstra.
The charges in the Service summary section of My Telstra in a browser show your phone usage so far in the current billing month. It shows how much of your included data you have used and how many days you have left until the end of your billing period.
Important: The amount shown is before any of your included plan allowances are applied. This is not your bill.
On your Telstra Bill - most plans come with a specific number of included calls, SMS and data. Check what’s included by looking at the description under the Mobile Plan name (highlighted below).
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