Section 5.3: Billing Ledger and AI Credits

This guide explains how AI credits work in ABRAM, how the organization-bound credit ledger is structured, and how AI features are gated by your credit balance.

1. The AI Credit Concept

ABRAM meters AI-powered actions—such as analyzing a project brief, suggesting team matches, breaking down a script, or chatting with the ABRAM assistant—using credits. The credit ledger belongs to your organization (or your personal workspace, if you're not part of a larger organization), not to any individual user, so every member of a team draws from the same shared pool.

2. What Consumes Credits

The exact number of credits a given action uses is calculated from the actual AI work performed—things like the length of the text involved and the complexity of the task—so costs vary from one request to the next. There is no fixed price list; any specific figures you may see in the product (such as a cost estimate before running an action) are approximate and can change based on what you submit.

AI features that draw from your credit balance include:

• Project brief analysis — extracting scope, roles, and requirements from an uploaded brief
• Team matchmaking suggestions — AI-assisted candidate and crew recommendations
• Script breakdown — parsing a script into scenes, elements, and requirements
• ABRAM assistant conversations — chatbot questions and actions performed on your behalf
• Document generation — AI-drafted documents such as summaries or outlines
• Web search — AI-assisted lookups the assistant performs to answer a question

[!NOTE] Image generation is not yet available in ABRAM and does not consume credits.

3. The Three-Pool Credit Structure

Every organization's ledger is divided into three credit pools. When an AI action is billed, credits are drawn in a strict priority order:

1. Monthly Allowance: Included in your subscription tier. Drawn first. It resets every month; unused allowance does not roll over.
2. Trial Credits: Awarded during onboarding, where applicable. Drawn second, and only while your trial is still active.
3. Purchased Balance: Top-up credits bought through checkout. Drawn last. Purchased credits never expire.

4. Monthly Credit Allowances by Plan

Every subscription tier includes a monthly AI credit allowance:

On Pro and Studio the monthly allowance scales with the number of seats on your subscription, so each seat you add increases your organization's total monthly credits. Workspace storage limits are fixed per tier and do not change with seat count. Free carries a one-time grant of 80 credits rather than a monthly allowance.

5. Organization-Bound Billing

• Organization-Bound Billing: All credit ledgers are bound to an organization. If you're working solo, your personal workspace acts as your organization for billing purposes.
• Membership Routing: If you belong to an active organization, AI actions you take are billed against that organization's ledger rather than a personal one.
• Onboarding Exception: AI calls made during the onboarding wizard (for example, parsing your resume while setting up your profile) are free and do not draw from the ledger.

6. Buying Top-Up Credit Packs

If your organization is running low, Owners and Admins can purchase one-time top-up packs from Settings → Billing. Purchases are processed securely through Stripe Checkout, and your balance updates immediately once the purchase completes.

Purchased credits are added to your Purchased Balance pool, which never expires and is drawn only after your Monthly Allowance and any Trial Credits are used up.

7. Credit Checks and the Credit Depletion Gate

Before running an AI action, ABRAM checks that your organization has an available credit balance across its active pools. If the check passes, the action runs, and the actual credits consumed are deducted from your ledger once it completes.

When Your Balance Reaches Zero

If your organization's combined balance (Monthly Allowance, Trial Credits, and Purchased Balance) is exhausted, AI features are blocked. Instead of running the action, ABRAM shows a prompt directing you to Settings → Billing to top up or upgrade before you can continue using AI features.

Disconnect Safety Net

If a network disconnect or timeout interrupts an AI action partway through, ABRAM only bills your ledger for the work that was actually completed.

8. Credit Usage Log

To help you track where credits are going, ABRAM keeps a Credit Usage Log under Settings. It lists a per-feature history of credit transactions—so you can see, for example, how much of your organization's recent usage came from brief analysis versus assistant conversations or script breakdowns. Use it to spot heavy usage patterns before your balance runs low.

9. Feature Gating by Plan Tier

Separately from credit balances, some features are gated by your subscription tier rather than by credit consumption:

• Pro and above: seats and shared work, the shared crew roster, shared budgets, watermark-free call sheet and invoice export, automated call sheet distribution, script breakdown and brief parsing, quotes and estimates, timesheets, PO holds, budget alerts, client portals, Link Hub design controls, Slack and Frame.io, and Resources (inventory, kits and the resource calendar) up to 80 items.
• Studio and above: timecard submit and approval, financial export, crew templates, custom roles, client request intake (the form a client fills in and the inbox it lands in), talent search and matchmaking, capacity planning, cross-production conflict detection, the Executive Overview, and advanced logistics and bookings. Resources become uncapped.
• SMB / Enterprise only: gear checkout, barcode scanning, single sign-on and SAML, audit log export, the AI kill switch, API and MCP access, uncapped custom roles, and a bring-your-own storage bucket.

If a feature is unavailable, check whether it requires a higher plan tier before assuming it's a credit issue. A full credit balance does not unlock plan-gated features. See your plan's details in Settings → Billing for the full list of what's included at each tier.

10. Budgeting & Scheduling Feature Gating

Scheduling is not gated. The stripboard is fully editable on every plan, including the free one. Budgeting is capped on Free so the feature can be tried before it is paid for.

Gating Indicators & Upgrade Paths

• Trial Restrictions: When the limit of 5 budget line items or 5 expenses is reached on the Free plan, the system blocks the insertion of new items and displays a notification inviting you to upgrade.
• The production cap: the Free plan carries one production counted in total rather than one open at a time. Archiving a production leaves the slot taken; deleting it gives the slot back.
• Banners: Persistent upgrade prompts are displayed at the top of the financial overview frame for organizations on a capped tier, pointing to subscription settings for self-service upgrading.

11. Upgrading Plans and Buying Credits

Owners and Admins can purchase additional credits or upgrade plan tiers in Settings → Billing.

Subscription Tiers

Neither paid plan is sold from a seat minimum, so one person can buy a single seat on either. Paid annually, Pro is $17 a seat a month and Studio is $50 a seat a month.

Pro unlocks multi-seat collaboration, role-based permissions, the shared crew roster, shared budgets, watermark-free call sheet and invoice export, AI brief upload and script breakdown, quotes and estimates, timesheets, client portals, PO holds, budget alerts, Link Hub design controls, the Slack and Frame.io connectors, and Resources up to 80 items. Studio adds timecard submit and approval, financial export, crew templates, custom roles, client request intake, talent search and matchmaking, capacity planning, cross-production conflict detection, the Executive Overview and advanced logistics, and lifts the Resources cap. SMB / Enterprise adds gear checkout, barcode scanning, single sign-on and SAML, audit log export, the AI kill switch, API and MCP access, a bring-your-own storage bucket, and uncapped seats and custom roles.

Upgrading a Personal Workspace

If you're currently on the Free tier in a personal workspace and select a paid subscription (Pro or Studio):

1. Workspace Promotion: ABRAM launches a coordinated flow prompting you for your Company Name and Team Size.
2. Your personal workspace is automatically promoted to a full Organization.
3. You're redirected to Stripe Checkout to set up the subscription.
4. Once checkout completes, your organization's Monthly Allowance is active and team seat limits are updated.