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How AI Credit Works

AI billing lets an installation charge each tenant for the AI it uses, from an allowance included with the tenant's plan and then from top-up credit, and stop a tenant's AI cleanly when both are used up. It is off unless you switch it on. It is intended for ActiveManage's hosted service and for installations that report their AI spend to ActiveManage; most single-organisation installations never need it.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Configuration:

  • AI Settings — the section AI credit and billing, where it is switched on and priced

Architect Panel → Subscriptions:

  • AI Credit Ledger — every charge, top-up, refund and adjustment, per tenant
  • AI Package Limits — per-package allowances and weekly caps, read-only here
  • Tenant Plans — a single tenant's own AI allowance and weekly cap

Architect Panel → Activity:

  • AI Spend Notices — the 80% and 100% e-mails, and who was told
  • AI Credit Holds — credit reserved by AI calls still running

Admin Panel → AI:

  • AI Credit — what a tenant's administrators see

What a call costs

Every AI call, whether through a language model, TypeSafe Jev, or image and video generation, is charged to the tenant it was made for at the provider's list price, converted with USD to GBP and multiplied by Markup. The charge is fixed when the call is logged, so changing the rate later never re-prices history. A model the price table does not know is charged at Rate for an unpriced model, so an unpriced model is never a cheap route. A call that never reached a provider costs nothing.

Where a tenant's allowance comes from

A tenant has an allowance for each billing period of its plan. The first of these that is set wins:

  1. The tenant's own AI credit per period (pence) on Tenant Plans.
  2. Its package's Included AI credit per period (pence) on AI Package Limits.
  3. The plan's built-in allowance.

-1 means unlimited, and 0 means none (top-ups only). A weekly cap, Monday to Sunday UK time, is resolved the same way through AI weekly cap (pence) and Weekly AI cap (pence); 0 means no weekly cap, which is the default.

The order money is spent

  • The plan allowance first, until it runs out or the weekly cap is reached.
  • Then top-up credit, bought on the AI Credit screen, kept until used, and usable even once the weekly cap is hit.
  • Anything neither covers is absorbed, recorded as Absorbed on the ledger and never charged back. This only happens when a call runs past its own estimate.

Who is charged

  • A tenant's users: charged to their tenant.
  • Architects: recorded, never charged and never refused.
  • Tenant 0 (the sign-up wizard and platform background work): recorded at cost, never charged, and refused for the rest of the day once the day's total reaches Daily cap on tenant-0 AI (GBP).

With tenancy on, a tenant with no Tenant Plans row gets no AI at all, and a tenant whose subscription is not active is refused AI as well.

When credit runs out

The platform checks before it sends anything, so a refused call costs nothing. The person sees a plain sentence instead of an answer, for example that the plan's AI credit for the period is used up and when it resets, that this week's limit is reached, or that the request is larger than the credit left. Each refusal is still a row in the run log.

Calls already running hold their estimated cost, so two calls at once cannot spend the same credit. A hold is released when its call is settled, and stops counting after 15 minutes. While a tenant's remaining credit is below "Low" means below (GBP), only Calls at once while credit is low of its calls may run together.

Notices

At Warn at (80% by default) and at 100% of the allowance, and of a weekly cap, an e-mail goes once a period to up to ten of the tenant's administrators and to the ActiveManage notice address. Each is recorded on AI Spend Notices with who it went to and whether it was sent. If both are due together, only the 100% notice is sent.

Other effects while billing is on

  • Log every call is forced on, because a call is charged from its log row.
  • Send to AI's unmetered deliveries are withdrawn unless Unmetered Send to AI deliveries allows them.
  • Amazon Bedrock no longer signs with the platform's own AWS keys unless you explicitly say so.
  • The AI Builder can be opened to tenant administrators, if AI Builder for tenant administrators is on.

Worked example

A tenant's plan includes an allowance and no weekly cap. On the 20th its administrators receive the 80% notice. On the 26th a user's AI Builder request is refused with a sentence saying the period's credit is used up, when it resets, and that a top-up can be bought under AI Credit. The account owner buys one; the next request draws on the top-up, and the ledger shows the purchase and every charge after it.

Recommendations

  • Leave billing off unless you genuinely charge tenants for AI.
  • Let the package decide, and keep a tenant's own figures on Tenant Plans for real exceptions.
  • Use a weekly cap where one heavy week could otherwise empty a month's allowance.
  • Read AI Spend Notices to confirm warnings are actually being delivered.