One in three households have lost income as a result of Covid-19, and nearly half of people with children have lost household income. The pandemic has impacted millions of people, including those who have no experience of the benefits system.
Many people are unaware of the full range of help and support available, or what they are potentially eligible for. As a result, people are missing out on collectively around £10 billion of unclaimed benefits each year.
Charity organisations such as local Citizens Advice are stretching their already limited resources to cope with higher demand and more complex client needs. Policy in Practice is here to help staff and volunteers quickly guide clients on the support available.
Better Off Calculator
Our award-winning Better Off Calculator is the best tool to help you grow the financial strength of your clients.
The calculator helps you build the financial strength of your clients without needing to be a welfare expert. The tool helps you securely and confidentially assess your client’s unique situation to pinpoint benefits they may be eligible for, to give them the widest possible range of support. Using your client’s information, the tool calculates their future income to help them plan from month to month, so they can take control of their money and become financially stronger.
Whether you offer a self-serve calculator on your website or liaise directly with your client by phone and email, you can be confident that you are giving the most accurate and up-to-date guidance, as efficiently as possible.
Advisors are dealing with major changes in people’s needs. Keeping up with the changes in Covid-19 regulations and benefit rules can be left to us. Our up-to-date, accurate software lets expert advisors spend more time helping people instead of making manual calculations using different systems.
The intuitive built-in help features in the Better Off Calculator mean that even less experienced staff and volunteers can have confidence that the information they provide is accurate, without having to consult with more experienced colleagues.
Multiple advisors can access the latest version of a client’s record, making the process smoother and less time-consuming for everyone. Software updates are automatic and free, so you always give accurate advice.
Our free onboarding programme gets you started with the calculator as quickly as possible. We hold monthly free training webinars for all clients to attend, so if new colleagues join at any time they won’t miss out. The built-in live chat gives you access to our policy experts during office hours, and via email at other times.
Our calculator uses the Standard Financial Statement and provides organisations and people with a digital way to complete their budget in a format recognised across a multitude of sectors.
Our calculator has average cost of living data built-in so you can compare outgoings with a typical household in the same area. These numbers, from Office for National Statistics’ data, can make it easier to have difficult conversations about expenditure. You can objectively help clients to budget well and identify ways they may be able to reduce their outgoings.
Our calculator covers more than Universal Credit and other well-known benefits. It also calculates eligibility for extra financial support available from local authorities, utility providers and others. This may include council tax support, food vouchers, free prescriptions and warm home discounts. You can offer your customers self-serve access to the calculator whenever they want it, via your website.
Our charity sector clients use the Better Off Calculator to:
- Accurately maximise income
- Compare different scenarios
- Create a positive action plan
- Explain complex changes simply
- Identify ways to improve budgeting
- Save, store and access cases efficiently
- Give consistent and up-to-date guidance
Inspirational stories from clients who use
our Better Off Calculator
The Better Off Calculator makes it much quicker to do calculations and the tooltips make it easy to use, meaning we only need to train people once. The simplicity of the calculator means that clients can often self serve with little support.
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