Universal Credit is a means tested benefit paid to top up the claimant's income to help them pay for essential goods and services - including their rent and eligible childcare costs.
As a means tested benefit, how much the claimant will get depends how much they are deemed to need to live on (according to government figures) - their Maximum Universal Credit - against how much income they already have coming in.
So to work out a claimant's entitlement you will need to know about their personal circumstances - how old they are, whether they have any children, whether anyone in the family is disabled or a carer and so on, as well as details about their income.
Universal Credit is a monthly benefit and is reassessed every month - all the figures used are therefore monthly ones.
Once you have the information, to save you doing the maths you can use our Quick UC Calculator - click here.
There are three key steps to working out how much Universal Credit a claimant will get.