I was attracted to the Benefit and Budgeting Calculator because, as one tool, [it gives us] more consistency. It’s more than just an income and expenditure calculator. I was particularly excited about the better off scenarios [that help us to] work with our customers to show them how their income may improve, or not, depending on how their circumstances change, which links heavily into the Universal Credit calculation. I also like the action plan functionality and the self service option.
We help
Our clients give the best benefit and budgeting advice without needing to be experts in the benefit system
Our Benefit and Budgeting Calculator is outcome-focused and gives advisors information they can trust. They can easily explain complex benefit changes and give people the advice they need to make decisions.
Our public calculator is free for individuals. Our professional calculator has many extra features for frontline advisors, for which charges apply.
People don’t need to be a policy expert to understand
what changes to the welfare system mean for them
Our award-winning Benefit and Budgeting Calculator is
Fast
Accurate
Simple to use
Features of the Benefit and Budgeting Calculator
Over 4,000 pieces of legislation
Our calculator models over 4,000 pieces of legislation across four government departments to show how one individual is affected. Automatically updated on an ongoing basis and tested to be accurate across over one million real cases, Policy in Practice’s Benefit and Budgeting Calculator was built by people who understand the welfare benefit system and shaped by organisations who use it.
- Compare income under current system and Universal Credit
- Save and download information about benefits and how to maximise income
- See which benefits couples can claim to maximise joint income
- Compare income under current system and Universal Credit
- Save and download information about benefits and how to maximise income
- See which benefits couples can claim to maximise joint income
- Calculate income for students, refugees and asylum seekers
- Forecast UC fluctuations for weekly income for next 12 months
- Forecast weekly income and total household income that falls in UC assessment periods, for next 12 months
- Auto calculate Council Tax liability based on postcode
- Auto calculate Local Housing Allowance
- Calculate localised Council Tax Support
- Allow for Council Tax exemptions, disability and single person discounts
- Manually change auto calculated values
- Include details of self employed user and partner
- Allow for pension contributions
Set up a free trial, request a personalised demo, get a quote or just ask for more details. We'll call you back.
- See impact of change in earnings or hours on income via sliders
- See impact of change in earnings or hours on income via sliders
- Model, save and compare changes of circumstances
Set up a free trial, request a personalised demo, get a quote or just ask for more details. We'll call you back.
- Calculate a monthly average estimate for the next Universal Credit payment
- View a Universal Credit calendar showing the average Universal Credit payments for the next 12 months
- Calculate the exact amount for the next Universal Credit payment
- Give clients a more accurate prediction of how much money they’ll have next month
- Enter multiple types of income and payment dates
- Ideal for clients with complex employment and earnings situations
- View a Universal Credit calendar showing the expected income and exact amount and payment date of Universal Credit payments for the next 12 months
Set up a free trial, request a personalised demo, get a quote or just ask for more details. We'll call you back.
- Get personalised benefit advice
- Get advice to maximise income
- Print a record of the case
- Click links to Find a Job
- Click links to benefit claim forms and advice
- Get support via general email helpline
- Get personalised benefit advice
- Get advice to maximise income
- Print a record of the case
- Click links to Find a Job
- Click links to benefit claim forms and advice
- Get support via general email helpline
Set up a free trial, request a personalised demo, get a quote or just ask for more details. We'll call you back.
Help for advisors is not a feature of our free basic calculator. See our professional expert calculator for more information on this feature.
Set up a free trial, request a personalised demo, get a quote or just ask for more details. We'll call you back.
- Access built in chat support
- Print a case in full or selected sections, eg budget
- Share cases with others
- Save a case and return later
- Create personalised action plans
- Create and access management information
- Customise the visual look of the interface with your branding
- Set user permission levels
- Create tailored views for individuals, team and organisation
- Print case record and select which features to include in print
- View expert hovers showing detailed breakdown of how calculations are made
Set up a free trial, request a personalised demo, get a quote or just ask for more details. We'll call you back.
Budgeting is not a feature of our free basic calculator. See our professional expert calculator for more information on this feature.
Set up a free trial, request a personalised demo, get a quote or just ask for more details. We'll call you back.
- Access Budgeting calculator
- Compare outgoings with other similar households to help budget
- Create smart budget plans showing prioritised payments
- Calculate maximum overpayment repayments, deductions due to sanctions, advance payments and hardship awards
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Functions of the Benefit and Budgeting Calculator
Inspirational stories from clients using
the Benefit and Budgeting Calculator
The best thing for landlords to do is to have a small team of staff that are dedicated to getting their heads around Universal Credit so that they can give the information to their colleagues. We’ve got 4 to 5 years to get to the end of this exercise, maybe even longer. The important thing is to look at your high risk cases which are your new claims and look to support them. I recommend you do as much as you can to support your tenants because the more you invest now, the more you will actually save by avoiding problems further down the line.
The differences with this calculator, compared to others on the market, are the income assessment features that give the built in ability to maximise benefits and see the impact of working extra hours. The Universal Credit calendar feature helps us to flex payments based on fluctuating income.
We believe that, with the right support, most people can find work and build a career. We chose to work with Policy in Practice because their unparalleled expertise in simplifying the welfare system, as well as their Benefit and Budgeting Calculator, allows us to deliver innovative services to jobseekers across the entire Southern region.
We use the calculator with Reach Out, our vulnerable customer’s arm. The tool is invaluable in the early identification of benefit eligibility and assists with cost savings to our vulnerable customers. It is simple to use and shows a level of detail like nothing else on the market.
Ben Jones, Sigma
The Benefit and Budgeting Calculator is used as a motivational tool, as what better way is there to show someone how they can improve their situation by entering employment than by seeing that big difference as a financial figure?
Andy Johnson, Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council
When we were looking at a new benefit calculator, all of our colleagues who tested Policy and Practice’s Benefit and Budgeting Calculator agreed it was the one they wanted to have – the decision was unanimous! It’s ease of use and visual features will make it much easier to help our customers.
The Benefit and Budgeting Calculator is amazing, the frontline volunteers find it really useful. I especially like the calendar that shows claimants who get paid weekly how their monthly Universal Credit payments will be affected over the next 12 months.
Policy in Practice has helped Oxford to develop a budgeting tool that helps our advisors to have better, outcome-focused conversations with our residents. They have made DHP applications more effective, as well as more efficient, reducing the dependence of our residents on discretionary housing payments.
We needed to look at people’s circumstances before giving more flexible payment arrangements which meant we had to make decisions about what people could afford to pay. It was very difficult for staff to be objective and consistent in their approach, which wasn’t very fair for the customer. This also made it difficult for us to explain our reasoning to our clients.
Supporting customers to ensure they maximise their income is a vital part of our debt advice process. Close to 50% of customers who we’ve done a benefits assessment for are eligible for more benefits than they’ve been claiming. The tool is quick, intuitive to use and rich in detail – including excellent information on support at local authority level. Another plus is that, as well as alerting customers to additional benefits, it highlights other entitlements such as free prescriptions, free school meals, help with water costs, reduced price WiFi contracts and more.
Sebrina McCullough, Financial Wellness Group
The customer is going to be £7,000 a year better off. Without the Benefit and Budgeting Calculator I’m not sure that case would have ever made its way to our team because the customer wasn’t in arrears, she was paying and she never had any idea she could claim any benefits.
Nadine Burns
Customer Support Team Manager
We really encourage our new customers to use the Benefit and Budgeting Calculator to help them be independent and find out what benefits they’re entitled to. It’s been a big help to our staff, our housing team and our domestic abuse teams in particular, to double-check the advice they are giving to people.
Beverley Hiden, Rooftop Housing
The Benefit and Budgeting Calculator is invaluable to us. We use it to help the homeless find properties that are affordable and to provide the correct advice.
The software is so user friendly and there are lots of intuitive features in there which mean that an advisor doesn’t have to be a benefits expert.
We have used the Benefit and Budgeting Calculator for several years. We use it seamlessly across three large departments and it has helped improve our customers’ experience. Customers give us their information once making conversations easier, and it helps us to have all the information we need in order to give support. We have helped lots of customers claim benefits they did not know they are entitled to and have always found Policy in Practice’s support if we have any queries to be impeccable.
Nadine Burns
Customer Support Team Manager
The Benefit and Budgeting Calculator has enabled us to carry out over 4,000 benefit calculations. The ‘what if’ scenarios in the calculator enable us to have a conversation with someone where we can model the ‘in work’ and ‘out of work’ scenarios. It gives our tenants some certainty when they go back into the world of work, move into a new sector or take up employment in another town.
Darren Thomas, Grwp Cynefin
The Benefit and Budgeting Calculator is different. Its outcome-based approach has been very powerful and has really helped us to change behaviour of both our residents and advisors.
The Policy in Practice Benefit and Budgeting Calculator is a fantastic asset for our employability teams to use with people on the Work and Health Programme. The support the Policy in Practice team have provided from start to finish has been excellent.
The Benefit and Budgeting Calculator has changed the way we work completely across different teams. We have over 100 staff using it and there now tends to be only one conversation with our customers so it’s made it easier for them. It’s speeded up processes in a way that we didn’t really think would happen.
Nadine Burns
Customer Support Team Manager
Our advisors using the Benefit and Budgeting Calculator were 3 times more effective at getting people into work.
The software is user friendly with lots of intuitive features. Any software is only as good as its implementation and the support we’ve had from Policy in Practice has been a massive benefit.
The Benefit and Budgeting 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.
Sue McCarron, Citizens Advice Wirral
Deven understood what our needs were and listened to how we intended to use the calculator as part of our pilot. His detailed knowledge of the current benefit system and Universal Credit, combined with his technical expertise to build online tools of this type, made him the ideal person to work with.
Our biggest concern, as UC rolls out across our large geographic area, was that we have consistency, that our tenants get the same service and also that our advisors have something to fall back on. Policy in Practice gives us that and we can access it from anywhere. The way that Policy in Practices deals with income entitlement, as well as the expenditure of the household, gives our advisors the confidence to have frank and honest discussions with households. Nothing speaks better to our tenants than facts and figures.
As well as mitigating against the risks brought by the welfare reforms programme we also saw that there was a big chance to try and do something different, to promote opportunity.
Staff at Elite Supported Employment find the Policy in Practice Calculator an excellent tool to provide information to our participants. The calculator is easy to use and the expert calculator breakdown tool makes the results easy to understand. Being able to print off the graph also gives our participants a visual document to refer to. It’s also great to be able to save a case, we can easily find a calculation and make any adjustments if needed, saving the time of completing a new calculation.
Sue Price, Elite Supported Employment
You can explain benefit entitlements but people may not fully grasp the numbers. Having the Benefit and Budgeting Calculator as a mechanism to visually explain the breakdown of entitlements using colour coded charts really helps as it’s something people can relate to.
Grant Bailey, Cheltenham Borough Homes
Income maximisation is so important, as is building a customer’s confidence and identifying additional money they may be able to claim. This is where we use the Policy in Practice Benefit and Budgeting Calculator.
Deborah Ware, Financial Wellness Group
One of the reasons we have chosen Policy in Practice’s Benefit and Budgeting tool is that it allows you to see, when you put in the postcode, certain things that are available to customers, discounted wifi being one of them.
Kirsty Hunn, Fedcap
Our tenants are facing increased pressure on their budgets as a result of welfare reforms. The Benefit and Budgeting Calculator allows us to provide better income and budgeting support to our tenants.
I decided Policy in Practice’s Benefit and Budgeting Calculator was something we really needed. It’s enabled us to provide a consistent approach to assessing affordability. We’ve been able to give our customers an online tool which lets them take control of their finances and liaise with us electronically, without the awkwardness or challenge sometimes faced in person.
