Billing & Budget

Prepaid credits that fund your organization's usage, and the organization budget that caps what everyone can spend in a day, week or month

Two things decide whether a request can be paid for. Credits are the prepaid funds your organization's usage is paid from. The organization budget is a ceiling you choose on how much everyone together may spend in a day, week or month. Credits make sure there's money behind usage; the budget makes sure spend can't run past a number you picked. Both are on the Billing & Budget tab of the Organization page.

Credits

The Credits card shows Credits remaining, which is your organization's prepaid balance for billable usage.

Credits follow your DarcyIQ Platform billing permissions, not your Dispatch role. A Dispatch Admin without billing permission sees "You don't have enough permissions" or "You don't have enough permissions to add funds." Auto top-up only appears for people allowed to manage it.

Adding Credits

Enter an amount Under Amount to add, enter a whole-dollar amount. The field starts at $1,000. The minimum is shown under the field and is at least $500.

Click Checkout Dispatch takes you to a secure checkout page to pay.

Return to Dispatch After paying, you come back to Billing & Budget with the message "Payment received. Credits appear on the balance once the payment clears." If you cancel instead, you'll see "Checkout was canceled. No charge was made."

If your organization hasn't set up plan billing yet, the card says "This organization does not have a billing profile yet. Complete plan billing before adding usage credits." and Checkout stays unavailable until that's done.

When Credits Run Out

When the balance reaches zero, the card shows "No prepaid credits remain. Add funds to keep usage running." Requests to models are then refused, and the caller sees "No credits are available for your organization. Contact your administrator to add funds."

Auto Top-Up

If you're allowed to manage it, an Auto top-up panel sits next to the balance. It charges the same amount as your last payment when the balance falls to a threshold you set.

Setting

What it does

Payment methods

The cards on your billing profile. Add one with +, and choose which one is charged with Use for top-up. Badges show the Billing default card and the card used for Auto top-up.

When balance is at or below

The balance that triggers a top-up. It starts at $500.

Enable auto top-up / Disable auto top-up

Turns it on or off. You need a card on file and at least one earlier payment, because auto top-up repeats the amount of your last payment.

If an automatic charge fails, the card shows Last auto top-up failed with the reason.

Recent Purchases

Recent purchases lists each credit purchase with When, Source, Amount, Status and a link to the Receipt where one is available.

The Sidebar Meter

Dispatch Admins see a meter at the foot of the sidebar on every page. It shows the prepaid credit balance, labeled "Left for the organization", with an Add credits link that opens this tab. If you've set an organization budget, the meter also shows how much is left in it, with a bar that turns amber at 75% used and red at 90%.

Organization Budget

The Organization budget card sets a single spending ceiling across every key in the organization. In the card's own words: "Once it is reached, requests are refused until the window resets or the limit is raised."

Field

Options

Window

Monthly, Weekly or Daily

Limit (USD)

Any amount greater than zero. Leave it empty for no limit.

Click Save to apply it. An organization has one budget at a time, so saving a new one replaces whatever was set before, even if it was on a different window. Click Remove to go back to no limit. With no budget set, the card says "No limit is set. Spend is uncapped across the organization."

Once a budget is set, the card shows progress such as "$1,240.00 of $5,000.00 spent this month." A new budget shows "Spend against this budget will appear within a few minutes." until its first measurement.

Windows follow UTC: daily budgets reset at midnight UTC, weekly budgets on Monday, and monthly budgets on the first of the month.

When the Budget Is Reached

The budget is a hard stop, not a warning. Once spend reaches the limit, every request in the organization is refused until the window resets or you raise the limit. The caller gets an error saying that the organization's budget has been reached, how much has been spent, and that it "resets at the start of the next period, or your Darcy administrator can raise it."

Spend is measured every few minutes, not per request. The organization can go slightly past the limit before requests start being refused.

This tab has no alert settings. Insights is where Dispatch flags budget concerns for administrators, such as an organization with no spend limit, how spend is pacing against the budget, people close to their allowance, and requests refused by a spending limit.

How the Budget Relates to Allowances

The organization budget is one of three spending limits a request can meet:

Limit

Applies to

Where it's set

Allowance

One person, across every key they hold

Change budget on the API Keys page, or the defaults for new key owners. See Users.

Guardrail spend limit

Each person the guardrail is assigned to

Guardrails

Organization budget

Everyone together

This tab

Each request is checked against all three, and the first one that's been reached refuses it. A person's allowance is checked before the organization budget, so someone over their own allowance is told that rather than that the whole organization has stopped. Allowances divide up what the organization may spend, but they can't add to it: once the organization budget is reached, nobody can make a request, whatever their own allowance says.