Keep credit use predictable

Know where your credits go, catch the costs that repeat without anyone clicking, and set limits and alerts so the month’s total doesn’t surprise you.

Before you start

• Permissions: everyone can open Monitor Usage. Setting limits, alert recipients and the nightly budget takes an organization Admin.
• Data you need: none. A few weeks of use makes the patterns easier to read, but you can set limits on day one.
• Credits this uses: none.

Steps

1. Know the rate card

These are the default rates. Your plan may differ, and your organization’s own rates are under How credits are counted on Monitor Usage.

What uses credits	Default rate
Question asked in the Library	1 credit per question
Question answered in a project	1 credit per question
Table built in the Library	1 credit per table
Connector sync	1 credit per sync
Nightly insight analysis	1 credit per analysis
Step refinement	0.5 credits per refinement
Scheduled project run	1 credit per 10 steps
Researcher rows	0.001 credits per row

A question to the Librarian counts once, however many queries it runs to answer you. Parts of a credit add up through the month, so two step refinements make one credit.

2. Find the costs that add up quietly

Questions are easy to picture. The surprises are usually schedules nobody’s watching, and big one-off runs.

What	How it adds up
A scheduled project	Blocks of 10 steps, rounded up. A 25-step project on a daily schedule can use 3 credits a day, about 90 a month, if every step runs. A run where no steps ran costs nothing
A dashboard’s Automate	Every refresh, Run Now included, counts as a scheduled project run
A scheduled connector sync	1 credit each time it syncs something, so an hourly schedule can reach 24 a day
Nightly insights	Up to the Nightly credit budget each time it runs. The budget defaults to 3, so a workspace set to Daily can reach about 90 a month, and one left on Automatic far less once it settles to weekly
Researcher	0.001 credits a row, so a run over 100,000 rows is 100 credits

Some things cost nothing: syncs and project runs you start yourself, file uploads, and a table build that fails.

3. See where the credits went

Open Settings and choose Monitor Usage, under Billing & Usage.

• What used credits lists every charge, newest first, and Activity filters it by kind of work. The Who column reads Nightly insights, Scheduled run or Automatic for work nobody clicked that day.
• By project and By tool split the total. On By tool, scheduled runs show as “System (scheduled runs)”.
• Usage over time projects where the billing period will land.

Look weekly for the first month. Once you know the pattern, monthly is enough.

4. Set per-person limits

1. Open Settings, then People under Organization.
2. Set Default limit per person: Unlimited, or 5 to 1000 credits a month.
3. Change a single person’s Monthly credit limit where they need more or less.

A person’s limit is a hard stop. When they reach it, nothing more runs for them until their credits reset, and they see a message saying an admin can raise it. It doesn’t set aside credits for them: in the setting’s words, “Credits are still shared across your organization; a limit only caps how many one person can use each month.”

Give people who own schedules some room, because a scheduled sync counts against whoever created the schedule. Nightly insights are never stopped by anyone’s limit.

5. Size the nightly budget

On a workspace’s Nightly insights tab, pick a Nightly credit budget of 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 or 10. Each workspace you turn the pass on for has a budget of its own. “One credit is one analysis.” After a pass, the section shows what last night used and how many credits your organization has left.

What’s the budget buying? Suggestions in your Inbox. If nobody works through them, a smaller budget saves credits and loses little, and Automatic under How often does it for you by dropping to weekly, then pausing, when nobody reads the Inbox. Weekly does the same thing at a fixed rate. At 0, the pass is still scheduled but does no thinking.

6. Get warned before a limit

Usage alerts need no setup. On Usage Alerts, under Billing & Usage, each alert gets a badge:

Badge	When it appears
Approaching limit	A plan feature reaches 80% of its limit
Over limit	A plan feature goes past its limit
Usage spike	Credits are being used at three times the usual rate or more

These alerts cover the organization’s limits, not each person’s. To get them by email, an admin adds addresses to Alert email recipients, one per line. Tick Enable monthly usage forecast to have Querri project month-end usage, then click Save preferences.

The organization’s monthly allowance is soft. Past it, work carries on, the extra use is billed, and a Monthly credits used up prompt appears.

Check your work

• You can name each schedule that uses credits, and roughly what it costs a month.
• Default limit per person is set, and people who own schedules have room.
• Alert email recipients lists whoever should hear about limits.
• The Nightly credit budget matches how much of the Inbox actually gets read.

Troubleshooting

Someone says nothing runs for them. They’ve reached their monthly credit limit. Raise it on People, or wait for their credits to reset.

Credits jumped overnight. Filter What used credits and read the Who column. Nightly insights and Scheduled run lines are work nobody clicked.

A Usage spike alert appeared. Credits went to three times the usual rate or more. Check By project and By tool for what changed, such as a new schedule or a large Researcher run.

A member can’t see the By user tab. Per-user privacy on Usage Alerts decides who sees it. With the default, Admins only (recommended), only admins see everyone’s usage.

Next steps

• Credits: what uses credits, and how they add up.
• Monitor usage: every part of the usage page.
• Usage alerts: alerts, recipients and privacy.
• People: per-person limits.
• Nightly insights: the nightly budget and how often the pass runs.