What Are AI Credits?

Summary

Torqueflow meters every AI feature - voice calls, WhatsApp replies, SMS replies, and diagnostic queries - using a single unified credit system. Credits come from three sources: your monthly subscription allowance, packs you purchase, and gifts from Torqueflow. This article explains what credits are, where they come from, how long they last, and how your balance is calculated. For the billing controls themselves (buying packs, auto top-up), see finance/ai-credits.

Prerequisites

• You must be an owner with the billing.credits.view permission to see balance details.

Steps

Understand what credits are for

1. Every AI interaction costs credits:
   • A voice call answered by the AI consumes credits based on the raw provider cost of the call (transport, speech-to-text, language model, text-to-speech).
   • A WhatsApp AI reply consumes credits based on the AI tokens used to classify and respond.
   • An SMS AI reply consumes credits the same way as WhatsApp.
   • AI diagnostic queries (where available) consume credits per query.
2. Non-AI activity never costs credits. Staff-written replies, portal messages, manual work order creation, invoices, reports, and the scheduler all run on your subscription with no credit impact.
3. Demo organisations and test calls never consume credits.

Know the three types of credit

Torqueflow tracks credits in a ledger with three types, used in strict priority order:

Priority	Type	Source	Default expiry
1	Monthly	Your subscription allowance, allocated on your billing cycle day	End of billing cycle (unused monthly credits expire)
2	Gifted	Torqueflow support (onboarding bonus, goodwill, migration help)	90 days from grant
3	Purchased	Credit packs you buy, or auto top-up	12 months from grant

When you use AI, credits are drawn from monthly first, then gifted, then purchased - so your subscription allowance always gets used before you dip into credits you paid for separately. Within each type, the oldest credits are used first (FIFO).

Understand monthly allocation

1. On each billing cycle day (for example, if you subscribed on the 14th, this is the 14th of every month), a new batch of monthly credits is added to your ledger automatically at 00:30 UTC.
2. The default monthly allowance is 500 credits. Torqueflow Support can set a different allowance per organisation (for example, as a promotional discount with an auto-revert date).
3. Your existing monthly credits from the previous cycle expire at the moment the new allocation arrives. This is intentional - monthly credits are a use-them-or-lose-them allowance, not savings.
4. Gifted and purchased credits do not expire at the billing cycle boundary. They live on their own clock (90 days and 12 months respectively).

Understand trial credits

1. A new trial organisation receives an initial seed of trial credits (equivalent to roughly £25 at default conversion) as soon as the trial starts.
2. Trial credits are separate from subscription credits and are marked in the ledger with source trial_seed.
3. If the trial ends without conversion to a paid plan, any remaining trial credits are expired immediately.
4. Trial orgs also have a separate trial cost cap which limits total AI spend regardless of credit balance. See ai-credits/what-happens-when-credits-run-out for how the trial cost cap interacts with degradation.

Check your balance

1. Go to Settings > Billing.
2. The Credit Balance card shows your total available credits, a fuel gauge, and a natural-language estimate like “Based on your usage, these credits should last approximately 12 days.”
3. Below that, a breakdown lists credits by type with refresh or expiry dates:
   • Subscription credits with the next refresh date.
   • Purchased credits with “(no expiry)” unless close to the 12-month limit.
   • Gifted credits with the expiry date if applicable.
4. Your balance is computed as the sum of remaining credits across all non-expired ledger entries. There is no separately stored “balance” number - it is always derived from the ledger.

Understand the audit trail

1. Every credit grant, deduction, and expiry creates an immutable ledger entry. The ledger has no update column - entries are created and their remaining amount can only decrease.
2. Every deduction records which ledger entry it drew from, the channel (voice/whatsapp/sms/diagnostic), the raw provider cost, the credits charged, and the interaction ID.
3. Torqueflow Support can review this audit trail for dispute resolution. You do not need to track it yourself.

Expected Outcome

• You understand that credits cover AI usage and nothing else.
• You can read the three types of credit on your balance breakdown and know which expire when.
• You know where monthly credits come from and why they refresh each billing cycle.
• You can answer “why is my balance going down?” by pointing to specific AI interactions.

Troubleshooting

Problem: My monthly credits disappeared on my billing cycle day. Cause: Expected. Unused monthly credits expire when the new allocation arrives. Only purchased and gifted credits carry over. Fix: Buy a credit pack if you regularly exceed your monthly allowance, or upgrade to a plan with a larger monthly allowance.

Problem: I topped up with a credit pack but my balance shows less than I expected. Cause: Monthly credits are consumed first, so your balance shows monthly + purchased together. Check the breakdown on the balance card to see purchased credits separately. Fix: No action needed. Your purchased credits are there - they are just behind the monthly allowance in the consumption order.

Problem: I received gifted credits but they are gone already. Cause: Gifted credits have a 90-day expiry. If the gift was more than 90 days ago, it has expired with an explicit ledger entry. Fix: Contact Torqueflow support if you believe the expiry was premature.

Problem: I cannot see the Credit Balance card. Cause: Your role does not have the billing.credits.view permission, or your subscription state is not active. Fix: Ask the account owner to check your role permissions. If you are the owner and still cannot see it, contact support.

Notes

• The balance computation excludes expired entries automatically. There is no way to “revive” expired credits.
• Grandfathered organisations (on legacy plans) receive monthly credits the same way as standard plans, using an admin-set billing cycle anchor day.
• All credit events are audited for UK GDPR compliance - you can request a Subject Access Report showing every credit grant, deduction, and expiry for your organisation.

Permissions

• billing.credits.view - required to see the balance dashboard and ledger breakdown.
• billing.credits.purchase - required to buy credit packs or configure auto top-up. Owners only by default.