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Accounts and billing

How people, accounts, members, access and credits fit together on AlisX, and why the model is shaped the way it is. Read this to understand what you are administering before you change it.

One person, many accounts

You sign in as one person: your email address, verified by an identity provider such as Google or Microsoft. That identity is your user. It carries your name, photo and profile, and it is the same in the console, the CLI and the TUI.

An account is an organisation's home on the platform. It holds a plan, billing details, a payment method, members, and everything those members make: projects, build environments and products. You can be a member of several accounts, for example your employer's and a client's.

Membership is the link between the two. A member record ties one user to one account and says three things about them: their role on the account, whether they have Ideate access, and whether they have Build access. It can also carry a cost code, your organisation's own accounting identifier, so that the member's spend can be attributed to a department or project in your books.

flowchart LR
  U[You, one user] -->|member: role, Ideate, Build| A1[Account A]
  U -->|member: role, Ideate, Build| A2[Account B]
  U -->|active account| A1
  A1 --> P1[Plan, billing, invoices]
  A1 --> I1[Projects]
  A1 --> B1[Build environments]

One active account at a time

Although you may belong to many accounts, your session names exactly one as active. Every tool, the console and the CLI read that one account: the projects you see, the build environments you enter, the account admin pages you open. Usage is measured against it too. Every credit spent with the Alis Ideate tools and every active build hour on the Alis Build tools is recorded to your active account, and that account receives the invoice.

This is why switching accounts is a single action in the account menu, and why the confirmation says Now viewing account. Choose the account in the console and the CLI follows; run alis accounts select and the console follows. To become active, an account only needs you to be a member of it. Whether you may then use the Alis Ideate tools or the Alis Build tools in it is the Ideate access and Build access on that membership.

Roles: who may run the account

Every member holds one of two roles. A viewer can read the account and use the tools they have access to. An admin can also change the account: add and remove members, grant and revoke Ideate and Build access, approve requests, manage billing and limits.

The floor is deliberate. Adding a member always grants viewer access, and Ideate or Build access can be revoked without removing the person. That lets an admin take Build access away from someone who moved teams while keeping them in the account's projects. Removing a member entirely is a separate, explicit action that clears Ideate access, Build access and the membership together.

Ideate access and Build access

The Alis Ideate tools and the Alis Build tools carry different costs and different consequences, so access to each family is granted separately: Ideate access for Projects, Interviews and Artifacts, Build access for Environments, Workstations and DBD. In the console this is two switches per member, under the heading the console calls Product access.

Why not one switch? Three reasons.

  • Cost differs. The Alis Ideate tools meter credits spent on generation, interviews, recordings and documents. The Alis Build tools meter per active build hour. An organisation may want many people using the first and few using the second.
  • Consequence differs. A builder can create products and deploy into real cloud environments in the account's name. That is worth a deliberate approval, which is why a member can request Build access and an admin approves it, while Ideate access can be handed out more freely.
  • Growth differs. Auto-enrol is set for Ideate access and for Build access separately. An account can let everyone on its email domain join with Ideate access at once while keeping Build access behind approval.

Without access you are not locked out of the account. A member without Ideate access still sees projects shared with them; a member without Build access sees a page that lets them request it.

Credits: one meter across the platform

Usage on AlisX is measured in credits, and every tool draws from the same balance. An account holds exactly one plan, and the plan sets one credit price that the Ideate tools and the Build tools both draw against. The Alis Ideate tools meter per action: a document processed, a synthesis produced, an interview run. The Alis Build tools meter per active build hour, and an idle tool costs nothing. A granted credit is spendable on either, and there are no seats: nobody pays for a licence no one touches.

A new self-service account starts with a grant of free credits. When they are used up, the account is billed monthly for the credits its members consumed: at the end of each month an invoice is generated for the account, finalised, and emailed to its billing contacts, and the saved card is charged. Nothing is charged while free credits remain, which is why the sign-up flow can ask for a card while promising you will not be charged today.

Two mechanisms keep this predictable.

Usage limits
The account can have a Monthly usage limit: how many credits its members may use in a month, or a stop when the free credits run out. A limit of 0 blocks all usage. The sign-up flow seeds one; admins change it later from the account's Activity page. Each member can also have a limit of their own per month. A limit is checked before new work starts, and work that has already started always finishes, so a month can end a little over its limit.
Prepaid balances
Some plans work the other way round: the balance is topped up to a minimum at the start of each period, acting as a monthly commitment, and spend draws it down.

Money shown in the console is an estimate: credits multiplied by the plan's credit price, excluding tax. The invoice is the record.

Plans and the trial

One plan covers every tool on the platform. The plans form a ladder: Express, the free trial; then Foundation, Professional and Enterprise, with a Partner tier for partners. An expired trial blocks usage until the account moves to a paid plan, but its history stays visible.

Joining an account

The sign-up page is built around the idea that most people should join, not create. It looks up your email domain and shows the accounts that recognise it. If an account has auto-enrol on for the tool you are heading into, you join in one click. If not, you request access and an admin approves it. Only when nothing matches, or you choose to, do you create a new account and become its first admin. This is what stops a company ending up with three accounts for one team.

Where to go from here