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Switching On AI Billing

Switching AI billing on is one setting, but on a multi-tenant installation it changes what every tenant can do from the moment it is saved. It is intended for ActiveManage's hosted service and for installations that report their AI spend to ActiveManage. This article is the checklist: what to prepare, which settings to fill in, and what to watch in the first days.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Configuration:

  • AI Settings — the section AI credit and billing

Architect Panel → Subscriptions:

  • Tenant Plans — every tenant needs a row before billing goes on
  • AI Package Limits — the allowances per package, read-only
  • AI Credit Ledger — confirm charges are being written

Architect Panel → Activity:

  • AI Spend Notices — confirm warnings reach people
  • AI Credit Holds — credit reserved by calls in flight

Before you switch on

  1. Check every live tenant has a plan. With tenancy on, open Tenant Plans and compare it with your tenants. A tenant without a row is refused AI as soon as billing is on.
  2. Check the allowances. Each package's allowance and weekly cap comes from the plan catalogue unless AI Package Limits overrides it; that tile is read-only, and package limits are set by ActiveManage. For one tenant that should differ, set AI credit per period (pence) and AI weekly cap (pence) on its Tenant Plans row: blank keeps the package's figure, -1 is unlimited and 0 is none.
  3. Choose who receives notices. Decide the operator address for the 80% and 100% notices, and which e-mail account sends them.
  4. Check Bedrock credentials. If any role uses Amazon Bedrock with the platform's own AWS keys, give AI its own credentials first: with billing on, the platform keys are no longer used unless you say so explicitly.

The settings

  • Charge AI to tenants: the switch.
  • USD to GBP: the exchange rate applied to the providers' US dollar list prices. The shipped value is a placeholder: confirm it.
  • Markup: multiplies the converted cost. Never below 1.
  • Warn at: the fraction of the allowance that triggers the warning notice, between 0.5 and 0.99.
  • ActiveManage notice address: the operator's address for every warning and 100% notice. Leave it empty and nobody on the operator's side is told.
  • Send notices from e-mail account: 0 uses the password-reset account.
  • Daily cap on tenant-0 AI (GBP): the limit on the sign-up wizard and platform work per UK day. 0 allows none, -1 is uncapped. The shipped value is a placeholder.
  • Rate for an unpriced model: the charge for a model the price table lacks.
  • Calls at once while credit is low and "Low" means below (GBP): stop a tenant with little credit left from running many calls together.
  • AI Builder for tenant administrators: lets tenant administrators use the AI Builder on their own tenant.
  • Unmetered Send to AI deliveries: Default withdraws them while billing is on. Leave the remaining settings at their defaults unless advised.

Switching on

  1. Fill in the settings above on AI Settings and press Save on the billing section, with Charge AI to tenants on.
  2. Make a small AI request as an ordinary user of a test tenant.
  3. Open AI Credit Ledger and find the row: Kind usage, the tenant, Cost (USD), Amount (GBP) and From plan allowance.
  4. Sign in as that tenant's administrator and open AI Credit in the Admin Panel to see the allowance bar move.
  5. Make sure tenant administrators can see the AI Credit tile: it is granted automatically to self-serve tenants' administrator groups, and has to be granted to other groups.

What to watch afterwards

  • AI Spend Notices: each row shows the scope, the threshold, the amounts, Sent to and Status (pending, sent, partial, failed, skipped or superseded). skipped means there was nobody to tell: check the notice address and that the tenant's administrators have e-mail addresses.
  • AI Credit Holds: rows appear and disappear as calls start and finish. A hold stops counting after 15 minutes even if its call never settles.
  • AI Credit Ledger: read-only, and never pruned. Rows of Kind purchase, refund, adjust and netoff record top-ups, refunds or disputes, staff corrections and a debt being repaid from the allowance.

What goes wrong, and how to tell

  • A tenant reports "AI isn't available because this account's subscription isn't active": it has no plan row, or its subscription is not active.
  • Every tenant is refused with "its AI credit couldn't be checked": the credit tables are not installed on this database. Ask your hosting administrator to apply the platform update.
  • The sign-up wizard says "AI suggestions are busy right now": the tenant-0 daily cap has been reached.
  • Bedrock roles start failing with not_configured: they relied on the platform's AWS keys. Give Bedrock its own credentials.

Worked example

An installation with twelve tenants reports its AI spend to ActiveManage and is to start charging tenants for AI. The architect checks Tenant Plans has a row for each tenant, adds two missing ones, and gives one tenant a larger allowance on its own row. On AI Settings they confirm the exchange rate, set the support team's address as the notice address, and switch billing on. A test request made as an ordinary user appears on the ledger straight away, and the first 80% notice a fortnight later shows on AI Spend Notices as sent to the tenant's administrators and to the support team.

Recommendations

  • Do the Tenant Plans check first; it is the step that cuts tenants off if missed.
  • Replace both placeholder figures before going live.
  • Always set a notice address, or nobody on your side hears about a tenant running out.
  • Test as an ordinary user: architects are never charged.