Credit

Text messages and phone calls are paid for from a prepaid balance, like a pay-as-you-go phone. This screen shows the balance, lets you top it up and set a daily spending limit, and lists every charge so you can see what each message and call cost.

Where to find it: Communication > Credit Who can use it: people with permission to manage billing and subscription - normally administrators.

The credit screen with the balance figures, today's spend and the charge statement

When you use this

Top up before a busy week so delivery texts keep going out.
Set a daily limit so a mistake cannot spend the whole balance in a day.
Check what a message or call cost, or reconcile your spending.

The balance

All amounts are in your workspace’s billing currency.

Figure	What it means	Why it matters
Balance	The money in your account.	What you have paid in, minus everything spent.
Reserved	Money held back for calls that are in progress. A call’s cost is not known until it ends, so its maximum is set aside when it starts and settled when it hangs up.	Reserved money cannot be spent on anything else until the call ends.
Available	Balance minus Reserved.	What new texts and calls can actually use. When it reaches zero, texts and calls are refused.
Spent (30 days)	Everything charged in the last 30 days. Top ups are not counted.	Tells you whether the balance is a week’s worth or a month’s.
Low balance alert	The level at which you are warned that the balance is low. Only shown when a warning level has been set.	A warning before texts start being refused.

Spent today and the daily limit

Field	What it means	Required	Why it matters
Spent today	Today’s spending, shown “of” your daily limit, or with “no daily limit”.	-	How close you are to the limit.
Daily spend limit	The most the workspace may spend on texts and calls in one day. Leave it empty for no limit.	No, 0 or more	Once a day’s spending would pass the limit, further texts and calls are refused until the next day. It protects you from a fault or a mistake sending thousands of messages. Empty never means “spend nothing” - it means no limit.

Click Save beside the box to apply a new limit. The button is only active after you change the figure.

Topping up

Field	What it means	Required	Why it matters
Amount	How much to add, in your billing currency.	Yes, at least 1.00 and no more than two decimal places	The amount charged to your card and added to your balance.

Action	What it does
Top up	Opens the Top up credit window.
Continue to payment	Takes you to Stripe to pay by card.

When you come back from Stripe you see “Payment received. Your balance updates shortly.” The balance rises as soon as the payment clears, usually within moments. If you leave Stripe without paying, nothing is charged and nothing changes.

If you see “Set a billing currency for this workspace before topping up.”, your workspace has no billing currency yet - an administrator needs to choose one in the Currency field of Settings > System.

The statement

Every charge and top up, newest first.

Column	What it means
When	When the charge or top up happened.
Type	Top up, Message sent, Message received, Call made, Call received, Browser call or Adjustment. Older workspaces may also see Number bought, Number refunded or Number rental from before numbers were included in the plan.
Amount	`+` for money in, `-` for money spent, with the currency.
Balance after	The balance straight after this entry.

Action	What it does
Search by type or reference	Finds entries by type or by what they were for, such as a payment reference.
Type filter	Shows only the types you pick, for example only Message sent to see what texts cost.

Tips and common mistakes

Phone numbers are included in your plan; they do not use credit. Only texts and calls do.
A long text message is sent as several parts and charged per part. Shorter templates cost less - see SMS templates.
Set a daily limit comfortably above a normal busy day, so it only stops something unusual.