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AI Allowance & Budgets

VMXpert usage is billed in credits. Your balance, spending reports, payment settings, and budgets all live on one page:

Admin → Toolbox → VMXpert → AI Allowance & Billing

This page is only visible to administrators with AI management access. Your current credit balance is shown at the top.

How credits work

  • Every store gets a free monthly credit grant — for many stores, everyday use fits inside it. Unused free credits don't carry over to the next month.
  • Purchased credits never expire. They carry over month to month, and each month's free credits are always spent first — so a purchased pack only starts draining after the free grant runs out.
  • Need more? Buy a credit pack — larger packs include bonus credits. There's no per-seat pricing; credits are one shared pool for the whole company.
  • Only successful work is charged. If a request fails, you don't pay for it.
  • Most saved work re-runs free — but not all. When VMXpert saves a routine or page as a fixed recipe, re-running it doesn't use AI and costs nothing. Routines that ask an agent to use judgment on each run (read that day's data and decide what's worth telling you) do spend credits every time they fire. The routine's listing shows which kind it is — if a scheduled routine is using more credits than you expect, that's the first thing to check.

Roughly what things cost: asking a question ≈ 1 credit · a custom report with a spreadsheet ~2–3 · an agent working through something new ≈ a few · reading a scanned page ~½ · generating an image ~1 · re-running a saved report free.

The allowance meter

The top of AI Allowance & Billing shows your store's monthly AI allowance as one picture: how much of the free monthly grant is used, when it resets, any purchased credits in reserve, and roughly how many more questions the balance covers (based on your store's own average cost per question).

Below the bar, the three stages are spelled out so nothing is a surprise:

  1. Plenty left — everything runs normally. Most stores finish the month right here.
  2. Running low — chat switches to Quick effort: shorter, simpler answers. Nothing stops.
  3. Used up — chat and scheduled work pause until the month resets. Add credits only if you don't want to wait. VMXpert can never spend money you haven't put in.

Usage report

The Usage report tab shows where your credits are going — broken down by employee, agent, or routine, over the time range you pick. Click a row to see the breakdown by effort tier, or export the report as a CSV.

Card & history

The Card & history tab holds:

  • Payment method — the card on file used for credit purchases.
  • Auto-reload — automatically buy a credit pack whenever your balance drops below a floor you choose. This keeps VMXpert from ever stopping mid-month because the balance ran dry.
  • History — the full ledger: every purchase, grant, refund, and the balance after each.

You can also buy credits directly from the VMXpert widget when the balance runs low.

Auto-reload emails

Auto-reload charges your card with nobody watching, so VMXpert emails your administrators every time it acts:

  • A top-up went through — what was charged, how many credits were added, and your new balance.
  • A top-up failed — a declined or expired card, most often. The email gives the reason the payment was refused and your current balance. VMXpert keeps working on the credits still on the balance: below 10 credits it switches to the faster, cheaper Quick effort level, and at zero, chat and scheduled routines pause until credits are added. You get at most one of these a day.

If a top-up fails, update the card under Card & history, or buy credits directly to keep working in the meantime.

Budgets

The Budgets tab is how you keep spending predictable. You can set a monthly credit cap on:

  • Each employee — how many credits that person can use per calendar month.
  • Each agent — the same, for automated agents. The catch-all agent's budget also covers your scheduled routines.

A progress bar next to each name shows this month's spend against the cap. Leave the cap blank for an open lane (no personal limit) — typical for owners and managers.

A cap isn't a brake — it's what makes it safe to turn VMXpert on for everyone. A person with a small monthly lane (most stores use 20–30 credits; a typical question costs about 1) can ask questions all month and can never run up a tab. The Quick start button above the employee list gives everyone who has no lane yet the same cap in one click; existing lanes and deliberate open lanes are left alone.

What happens when someone hits their cap

For employees, you choose the behavior with the Degrade / Block setting:

  • Degrade (the default) — VMXpert keeps working, but switches to the faster, much cheaper Quick effort level. The employee still gets help; it just costs a fraction as much.
  • Block — VMXpert stops for that employee until the month rolls over.

Budget alerts

When an employee or agent reaches 90% of their monthly budget, administrators get an email alert — once per month per threshold, so you're warned without being nagged. Administrators also get one when 80% of the month's free credits are used.

If auto-reload is on, that 80% email also tells you a charge is coming and which balance triggers it. That is the moment to replace a card that has expired or been reissued, before it is actually needed.

Built-in guardrails

Independent of budgets, VMXpert has abuse guards that apply to everyone: a limit on turns per conversation and per employee per day. These exist so a runaway conversation can't rack up costs, and they're separate from the budgets you set.

Tip

Want help picking sensible budgets for your team? Reach out to us anytime!