How to read your bill

Sometimes it's hard to understand your energy bills. We’ve provided easy guides to help you read all parts of your electricity and gas bills.

Understanding your energy bills

To query a particular part of your bill, find the section number and read the corresponding explanation for a better understanding.

1. Customer details: The name and postal address on your electricity account.
2. Your account information: The payment reference number is your unique customer number. Use this number when contacting customer support. This section also includes the invoice number, issue date and the invoice period.

3. Bill summary: Includes important summary information about your current and past bills. Check for any outstanding amounts, payments you have made, usage charges and credits.

4. Check for a better plan: We'll let you know if we have another plan that could save you money. You can also compare plans in your state at any time using Victorian Compare Energy in Victoria or Energy Made Easy for other states.
5. Total bill and due date: Check the total of your bill and when the bill is due. If you are in credit, there will be no due date and the credit amount will be shown. We will also let you know if direct debit is active on this account.

6. Query your bill: Contact us if you have any questions about your bill. Go to My Telstra for managing your account, getting help with your bill or questioning any charges.
7. Emergencies and outages: Call 000 if there is immediate danger to people or property. Your distributor manages the electricity network and can help with updates about electricity emergencies and outages in your area. The 24 hour contact phone number for your distributor is provided here.

8. Service address information: This section includes the address where your meter is located and your National Meter Identifier (NMI) number. Your NMI is specific to your electricity supply and is linked to your service address.
9. Meter read details: You can see if an estimated or actual read was taken, the start and end values of the read and usage amounts in kilowatt hours (kWh). If applicable you can also see the estimated date of your next meter read.

10. Usage and charges: Here you'll find details about all your usage and charges for the invoice period. Supply charge is the daily cost to keep you connected to the electricity grid. Description includes the supply charge and type of charges (peak, off-peak etc). All charges include the start date, units, unit price (per day or kWh) and the total price (where applicable) for the invoice period.
11. Credits: This includes information about any credits you have received during this billing period. Credits could include solar feed-in, government concessions or discounts applied to your bill.

12. Your monthly usage: The graph shows your electricity usage in kWh for this month and the past 12 months.
13. Similar household comparison: This section provides information about your kWh usage for this billing period and how your usage compares to other households in your postcode. The comparison is based on average usage data supplied by the Australian Energy Regulator.
14. Average for billing period: You can check your average kWh usage for this billing period and compare it to the same billing period last year.

15. Payment assistance: You'll find contact information for financial hardship and government concessions. Contact us for financial help and to check your eligibility for government concessions and rebates in your state.
16. Language services: We offer free multilingual translation and interpretation services for non-English speaking customers. Call 1800 241 600 Monday - Friday 8am - 6pm AEST.
17. Contact us: This includes website details for technical support, any customer feedback or if you want to lodge a complaint.