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Your billing period, explained.

Your energy bill does not follow the calendar month. It follows your meter. Here is how every Alberta property gets its own billing rhythm, why yours rarely matches your friends', and what happens when you switch retailers partway through.
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A billing period is the span between two meter reads. Your distribution company, the one that owns the wires and the meter, places every property in a read cycle and normally reads it about once a month. Your retailer bills from that read. Because cycles are spread across the whole month, the dates your bill covers are tied to your address, and they will rarely match your neighbour across town, your family, or your friends. The read cycle cannot be moved. The day we send your bill and the day it is due can be.

From meter to bill

How your property gets its billing cycle.

  1. Step 01

    Your distribution company owns the meter, and the read schedule.

    The company that owns the wires or pipes in your area also looks after your meter. It decides when that meter is read. No retailer, including FLUX, picks the read date.

  2. Step 02

    Every property is placed in a read cycle.

    Reading every meter in the province on the same day is not practical, so distribution companies spread the work across the month. Your property is assigned to a scheduled cycle, and that cycle sets roughly which day your meter is read. It belongs to the site, not to you, so it stays with the property when people move in and out.

  3. Step 03

    The read is sent to your retailer.

    After each read, the distribution company checks the number and sends it to whichever retailer supplies the site, usually within several business days. The span between one read and the next is your billing period. Meters are normally read about once a month, so a period is about a month long and rarely exactly 30 days.

  4. Step 04

    Your retailer bills from that read.

    We prepare your bill from the distribution company's data, email it to you, and collect payment on the due date shown on the bill. The usage dates on the bill come from your read cycle. The day we send the bill and the day it is due are ours, and those we can move.

Not the same as your friends

Same retailer, different dates.

If you referred a friend and their bill showed up on a different day, covering different dates, nothing is wrong. Here is why two FLUX customers almost never share a billing period.

  • A different cycle
    Your friend across town sits in a different read cycle. Their meter might be read around the 4th and yours around the 19th. Same retailer, same plan, completely different billing periods.
  • A different distribution company
    Calgary, Edmonton, and rural Alberta are served by different wires companies, each with its own schedule. Two homes an hour apart are not even on the same calendar.
  • Electricity and gas are read separately
    Your electricity meter and your gas meter are usually looked after by two different companies on two different schedules. It is normal for the electricity and natural gas sections of one bill to cover different dates.
  • Periods are not all the same length
    Weekends, holidays, and the length of the month nudge read dates around. One period might run a few days longer than the last. Charges billed by the day, like our $0.31/day administration charge on each meter, follow the number of days, so a longer period costs a little more and a shorter one a little less. Over a year it evens out.
What you can change

Your read cycle belongs to the property, so the dates your bill covers are fixed. The day we send your bill and the day it is due are ours, and we can move them to a time of the month that works for you. Email billing@fluxenergy.ca or call 1-844-572-FLUX (3589).

Switching partway through

One billing period, two bills.

You can start with a new retailer on any day of the month, and most start dates land somewhere in the middle of a billing period. When that happens, the period is split. Your previous retailer bills you from the last meter read up to your switch date. Your new retailer bills you from the switch date to the next read. Together the two bills cover the whole period, and every day is billed exactly once.

Nobody reads your meter on the switch date. The switch takes effect at midnight, and the meter keeps running. When the next regular read comes in, your distribution company sends it to both retailers, and under the province's settlement rules each one bills only for the days it supplied you. If you have solar, the energy you exported in that period is divided by the number of days you were with each retailer.

An example

Your meter is read on September 18 and again on October 18, a 30 day billing period. You switch to FLUX with a start date of October 1.

Previous retailer, final bill
September 19 to September 30. 12 days at their rate and their fees, then the account closes.
FLUX, first bill
October 1 to October 18. 18 days at your FLUX rate. From the next bill on, full periods from one read to the next.

Both bills look smaller than a normal month because each covers only part of one. Delivery charges follow the same days, so they are not doubled either. If your electricity and gas start on different dates, each fuel is split on its own.

Want one clean handoff instead of a split? Look at the billing period dates on a recent bill and choose a start date close to your usual read date. Read dates drift by a day or two, so treat it as best effort. Either way you pay for the same days once. The full switching process is in how to switch retailers in Alberta.

Questions we hear every billing run

Billing periods, answered straight.

Because your bill follows your meter read, not the calendar. Your distribution company reads your meter on the cycle your property is assigned to, and the span between two reads is your billing period. If your meter is read around the 19th, your billing periods run from roughly the 19th to the 19th.
Their property is in a different meter read cycle, so their meter is read on a different day of the month and their bill follows it. It has nothing to do with which plan either of you chose.
Yes, with one distinction. The day we send your bill and the day it is due are ours, and we can move them to a time of the month that suits you, around a payday for example. Email billing@fluxenergy.ca or call 1-844-572-FLUX (3589). What cannot move is your meter read cycle. It belongs to the property and is set by the distribution company, so the usage dates printed on your bill stay the same.
Two meters, usually two distribution companies, two read schedules. Each fuel is billed for its own period, and both are shown on your bill.
No. That one billing period is split in two. Your previous retailer bills you from the last meter read up to your switch date, and your new retailer bills you from the switch date to the next read. Every day is billed once, by whoever supplied you on that day. Your two bills for that period will both look smaller than usual, because each covers only part of it.
No. A switch takes effect at midnight on your start date, and no special read is taken. When the next regular read comes in, the distribution company sends it to both your old and your new retailer, and each one bills only for the days it supplied you. For solar sites, the energy you exported in that period is divided by the number of days you were with each retailer.
It most likely covers a partial period, from your start date to your property's next scheduled read. The bill after that covers a full period and will look more like what you are used to.
Most bills are based on an actual read. Now and then one is based on an estimate instead, for example when a meter could not be read. The next actual read trues it up, so one bill may look a little high or low and the following one corrects it.

FLUX facts on this page come from our Terms and Conditions (section 5, Billing and Payment). Meter reads and what happens to them when a site changes retailers are governed by the Alberta Utilities Commission's settlement codes: Rule 021 for electricity and Rule 028 for natural gas. Your read schedule is set by your distribution company, not by any retailer. For what each charge on the bill means, see how to read your energy bill.

No surprises

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