Account Credit

What account credit is

Account credit is a prepaid balance held on your account. You put money on it in advance, and it is drawn down as your services are billed. It is useful when you want to pay once and stop thinking about individual invoices, when you buy hourly-billed services that are charged continuously, or when your accounting prefers a single payment a month over many small ones.

Credit is money you have already paid. It is not a spending limit, an overdraft or a discount.

Where to find it

Open Billing from the portal sidebar. The page opens on your invoices and proformas, and directly under the page title sits the credit card showing Available Credit with your current balance and two buttons, Top Up and History. An Add Credit button also sits in the top-right of the page.

The page has two tabs: Invoices & Proformas, which lists your billing documents, and Credit History, which lists every movement of the balance.

Add funds

1. Click Add Credit or Top Up.
2. The window shows Current and After balances so you can see where the top-up lands before you commit.
3. Pick an amount. Six suggested amounts are offered, or type your own in the Custom field. The allowed range is shown in the field and is set by your provider; an amount outside it is refused with “Please enter an amount between … and …”.
4. Choose a Payment Method from the methods your provider offers. Without one selected you are told “Please select a payment method.”
5. If the method supports it, you may see Save this payment method for future top-ups and automatic payments. Tick it to store the method for later. Where your provider requires methods to be stored, the checkbox is replaced by a short notice saying so.
6. Click the Add … button. You are taken to the payment provider to complete the payment and returned to the portal afterwards.

Amounts are shown and charged in your account currency. If your provider’s limits are held in a different currency they are converted for you, so the suggested amounts you see are already in yours.

Note: If the payment does not go through you are told “Payment failed. Please try again.” and your balance is unchanged. Nothing is added until the payment is confirmed, so a cancelled or abandoned payment simply leaves an unpaid document behind.

What a top-up produces

A top-up creates a proforma with a single line reading Account Credit Deposit. A top-up carries no VAT — putting money on account is not itself a purchase of anything, so tax is applied later, on the services the credit pays for.

When the payment is confirmed:

• the amount is added to your balance immediately;
• the proforma is settled and, in the normal case, an invoice is issued for the deposit;
• both documents appear in the Invoices & Proformas tab and can be opened and downloaded like any other.

Some providers issue a single consolidated invoice per month instead. In that case the top-up is settled straight away and the credit is available at once, but the invoice for it arrives on your monthly document rather than on its own. See Consolidated Invoicing.

Note: A credit top-up can never be paid from the credit balance itself — that would be circular. The balance is also never applied to a top-up automatically. Top-ups are always paid with a real payment method.

What credit pays for automatically

Two things draw on the balance without you doing anything:

• Renewals. When a service comes up for renewal and automatic credit is active on your account, the renewal document is paid from your balance at the moment it is issued — in full if the balance covers it, partially otherwise, leaving the remainder to pay by another method. Funds you add afterwards are not applied to it on their own: open the document and choose to pay it with credit.
• Hourly usage. Services billed by the hour are deducted from the balance as they run. These appear in the history as usage charges rather than as invoices.

Deliberately, nothing else is swept. A new order, an upgrade and an add-on purchase are never paid from your balance behind your back — you choose credit for those yourself at checkout. This is so that money you put on account for the servers you already run cannot silently disappear into a new purchase.

Turning automatic credit on or off

Go to Profile → Preferences → Billing. A status panel at the top says whether Auto-Credit is Active or Auto-Credit is Disabled for your account right now, and below it are three choices:

Billing preference options

Option	What it does
Use Platform Default	Follows whatever your provider has configured. The description underneath tells you which way that currently falls.
Always Apply Credit	Pays renewal invoices and proformas from your balance when they are issued. Anything you add later stays on the balance until you spend it.
Never Apply Credit	Never uses the balance automatically. You apply it by hand at checkout.

The choice saves as soon as you select it. If your provider has not opened this setting to customers, the three options are replaced by an amber notice reading Preference Override Not Available, and the provider’s setting applies to your account.

Choosing credit at checkout

For anything you buy yourself, the balance is offered as an option rather than applied for you.

• New orders, upgrades and add-ons. On the checkout page, tick Use Credit Balance. The summary then shows how much of the balance is used and how much, if anything, is left to pay by another method. If the balance covers the whole order, no payment method is needed and the order completes on the spot.
• An outstanding invoice or proforma. Open it from the Billing page and choose to pay it from your balance. If the balance covers only part of it, the rest is paid the usual way.
• Shared payment links. An invoice you send to someone else through a share link cannot be paid from your credit balance — only real payment methods are offered on that page.

Hourly services need a minimum balance

Ordering an hourly-billed service requires a minimum credit balance, because there is nothing to invoice in advance. If your balance is short, the checkout shows an amber panel headed Credit Required for Hourly Billing stating the minimum required and your current balance, and the order button stays disabled until you top up. You can top up without leaving the page.

Automatic top-up

Some providers offer automatic top-up for accounts that run hourly services. When it is switched on and you have a saved payment method enrolled for automatic payments, your balance is recharged to a set target as soon as it drops below a set threshold, and you receive an email telling you whether that succeeded or failed. Only one automatic top-up is attempted within the provider’s cooldown window, so a failed attempt or a manual top-up you have just made will not be charged again immediately.

Saved methods live under Profile → Payment Methods, where you can see them, mark one as Default and delete any you no longer want. A method is stored when you tick the save option while paying.

Credit history

Click History on the credit card, or open the Credit History tab. Every row is one movement of the balance:

Credit history columns

Column	What it shows
Description	What the movement was for — a deposit, a document it paid, a usage charge or an adjustment. An adjustment made by your provider also names the person who made it.
Date	When it happened, to the minute.
Amount	Green with a plus for money added, red for money taken.
Balance After	Your balance immediately after that movement, so the column reads as a running statement.

The table sorts by any column and pages through your whole history.

Hourly charges are grouped

Hourly usage would otherwise produce one row per hour per service. Instead, charges for one service in one month are collapsed into a single row naming the service, its hostname and address, and the number of hours and the period covered. A View N hours button on the row opens the full hour-by-hour breakdown for that month.

Refunds and adjustments

• Your provider can add or remove credit by hand, for example to settle a goodwill claim. Such a movement appears as an adjustment in the history with the reason and the name of the person who made it.
• If a paid top-up is refunded to your card, the credit it granted is reversed on the balance at the same time, so the two never drift apart.
• Credit is money on account with your provider. Whether an unused balance can be paid back out to you is a matter for your provider’s terms — open a ticket to ask. See Getting Support.

Common questions

Quick answers

Question	Answer
Why was my new order not paid from my balance?	By design. Only renewals and hourly usage draw on the balance automatically. Tick Use Credit Balance at checkout.
Why is there no VAT on my top-up?	A top-up is not a purchase. Tax is charged on the services the credit later pays for.
I paid but the balance has not moved.	Credit is added when the payment is confirmed. Reload the Billing page; if the document is still unpaid, the payment did not complete.
My balance dropped and I did not buy anything.	Check the Credit History tab — a renewal or an hourly usage charge will be listed with the date and the amount.
Can I stop credit being used automatically?	Choose Never Apply Credit under Profile → Preferences → Billing, if your provider allows the override.
Can someone else on my account top up?	Only team members whose permissions include managing billing. See Team Members.

Related

Invoices & Payments, Placing an Order, Managing Your Services, Account Security, Team Members, Client Portal Overview.