8. Checking your HELP balance

On this page:

You are responsible for keeping track of your HELP balance and for advising your course provider if you don’t have enough left to cover your tuition fees.

There are 2 websites that help you keep track of what you have borrowed and how much you still have left to repay:

  • myHELPbalance for your study loan history and the amounts you’ve borrowed
  • myGov for amounts you’ve borrowed, repayments made and how much you have left to repay

8.1 - myHELPbalance

You can access your HELP balance via myHELPbalance. You’ll need either your Commonwealth Higher Education Student Support Number (CHESSN) or Unique Student Identifier (USI) (part 14) and the student ID number your course provider has given you. You’ll find these on your VET Student Loans Fee Notice or Commonwealth Assistance Notice (part 20).

Is the information up to date?

If you haven’t previously studied your course provider will have to report your USI before you can log into myHELPbalance.

It will take a bit of time after the census day (part 15) for your information on myHELPbalance to be updated. Census day happens after the course has already started. If it’s close to census day and you want to work out a total of your current loan amounts, you might need to add any units you’ve recently enrolled in.

8.2 - myGov

myGov will show you:

  • your VETSL debt (this is your VET Student Loan debt from 1 July 2019 onwards)
  • your HELP debt (this is a combined amount which includes HECS-HELP, OS-HELP, SA-HELP, FEE-HELP, VET FEE-HELP and VET Student Loan debts from 1 January 2017 to 30 June 2019)
  • any repayments (part 11) you’ve made and voluntary repayment options
  • any indexation (part 12) that has been applied to your debts

If you don’t already have a myGov account, go to myGov and choose ‘Create an account’.

8.3 - Delayed loan data

Sometimes there are delays in a student’s VET Student Loan data transferring to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). The two common causes of this are faults in the VET loan data IT system, and the provider’s delayed reporting of complete and accurate VET Student Loan records.

You can check your loan account details on myGov against your VET Student Loans Fee Notice or Commonwealth Assistance Notice (part 20).