Credits & Auto-Recharge

What it is

Your monthly plan pays for the CRM itself. Credit is separate — it is a prepaid balance that pays, cent by cent, for the things that cost real money every time you use them: text messages, phone minutes, your phone numbers, and the AI features. You top the balance up in advance, and each text or minute quietly takes its slice out of it.

Everything lives on one screen. Open Settings›Billing, then click the Credits tab. (On a phone: More›Billing & Plan›Credits.) You will find three things there.

It matters which side of the line a feature sits on. Only the metered things touch your credit:

• Paid out of credit — text messages in and out, inbound and outbound call minutes, call transfers, masked calls, your phone numbers each month, live transcription, recorded-call transcription, spoken prompts on your phone menus, Joby Agent calls, AI actions such as AI estimates and suggested replies, and Joby AI chat.
• Not paid out of credit — clients, jobs, estimates, invoices, reports, internal email and the calendar. The skip screen says this in as many words: you can keep using those without any credit at all.

The exact price of each one is on the Pricing tab of the same Billing page, under Usage Pricing.

When to use it

• The first day on a paid plan. A new paid account is walked through a Set up your credit balance screen. If you clicked Skip for now back then, this is where you do it properly.
• An amber or red bar appeared across the top of the screen. That is the low credit warning, and its Add credit link brings you straight here with the top-up window already open.
• A text, call or AI reply just refused to send. When the balance is spent, metered features are paused until credit goes back on.
• You are tired of topping up by hand. Turn auto-reload on once and stop thinking about it.
• Somebody asks where the money went. The transactions list shows each charge, each reload, and the balance after every one of them.
• A busy season is coming. Raise the reload amount before a marketing push so you are not reloading five times a day.

This is not the page for two nearby jobs. To change your plan, or to update the card itself, use the Overview tab and its Manage Billing & Payment button (during a free trial the same button simply reads Manage Billing). To see how many minutes and messages you actually used, use the Usage tab, which has a month picker and an Export CSV button.

Before you start

• Older accounts may not have credit yet. If the Credits tab shows "Credits not enabled for this organization", your company is still on the older billing arrangement and nothing on this page applies to you yet. The message says credit will be switched on at the next billing cycle.
• Top-ups are charged the moment you confirm. There is no basket and no undo. Choose the amount you actually want.

Step-by-step

Open the Credits screen

1. Click your name and email at the bottom of the left menu, then Settings.
2. Scroll to the Admin group and click the Billing card — the one described as "Subscription, usage, and payment details". Faster: type billing into the search box at the top of the Settings page.
3. The Billing page opens on Overview. Click the Credits tab, next to Invoices.
4. On a phone, go to More›Billing & Plan instead and pick the same tab.

The first-time setup screen

Straight after a company moves onto a paid plan, Joby shows a full-page setup screen headed Set up your credit balance. It is a one-time screen — if you skipped it, do the same two jobs from the Credits tab instead. It works like this:

1. Under Starter credit, pick one of the three buttons. The middle one is labelled popular. Underneath, a grey line gives you a rough translation into text messages, call minutes and AI agent minutes so the amount means something.
2. Auto-reload below it is switched on for you. Leave it on unless you have a reason not to.
3. Set Reload amount (USD) and When balance falls below. They start at $20 and $10.
4. Tick the authorization line. It reads back the exact figures you typed: it authorizes Joby CRM to charge your card on file that amount whenever the balance falls below that level, and reminds you it can be changed or switched off any time in Billing → Credits.
5. Click Charge $X & continue. The card is charged there and then, and you are dropped on the Billing page a moment later.

Not ready? Skip for now takes you to the Dashboard and charges nothing. The notice above the buttons — What happens if I skip? — explains what still works without credit.

Add credit by hand

1. On Settings›Billing›Credits, click Add Credit at the top right of the Credit Balance card.
2. The Add Credit window offers four fixed amounts. Click one, or type your own into Or custom amount (USD). The minimum is $20 either way.
3. Read the grey line: the money goes on your default payment method on file, and a receipt is emailed to you.
4. Click Charge $X. The button spins while the card is charged, then the window closes.

Turn auto-reload on, or change it

1. Click Auto-reload — the outlined button next to Add Credit.
2. In Auto-reload Settings, switch Enable Auto-reload on. Two fields appear.
3. Reload amount (USD) — how much goes on each time. Minimum $20, as the note underneath says.
4. When balance falls below (USD) — the level that sets it off. Minimum $10; the note explains that this keeps a safety buffer above the cut-off point.
5. Tick the authorization line at the bottom. It repeats your two figures back to you. The Save button will refuse without it.
6. Click Save. The window closes.

Reopening the window later shows what is currently set, not the defaults, so you can nudge one figure and save again.

Turn auto-reload off

1. Click Auto-reload.
2. Switch Enable Auto-reload off. The two fields and the authorization line disappear.
3. Click Save.

From then on nothing is charged automatically, and the line under your balance changes to warn you that metered features will be blocked once the balance reaches the cut-off.

Read the transactions list

1. Scroll to Transactions for the current month. It always shows this calendar month; there is no month picker here.
2. By default it hides the per-message and per-minute deductions, because there is one row for every single text and every single minute. The description tells you how many are hidden.
3. Tick Include usage rows at the top right of that card to see them. The tick box only exists when there is something to show.
4. Read across: Date, Type, Description, Amount (green for money on, red for money off) and Balance — what the balance stood at immediately after that row.
5. Use Previous and Next at the bottom to page through, 25 rows at a time.

The coloured badge in the Type column tells you where each row came from:

• Starter credit — the very first top-up from the setup screen.
• Manual top-up — you pressed Add Credit.
• Auto-reload — the standing instruction fired.
• Usage — a text, a minute, an AI action.
• Refund — money given back.
• Adjustment — a correction made by support.
• Reversal — a charge undone.

How to check it worked

• Top-up: a confirmation message names the amount charged and your new balance, the big number on the Credit Balance card goes up, and a Manual top-up row appears at the top of the transactions list. A receipt arrives by email.
• Auto-reload switched on: you get an "Auto-reload settings saved" confirmation, and the line under the balance changes to read Auto-reload: $X when balance falls below $Y with a small violet lightning bolt beside it. If it still says auto-reload is off, the save did not go through.
• Auto-reload switched off: the confirmation says "Auto-reload disabled" and the same line turns into the warning about metered features being blocked at the cut-off.
• Auto-reload actually fired: an Auto-reload row appears in the transactions list on its own, without you doing anything.
• Healthy balance: the number is green and the card reads Plenty of credit available. Amber with Low balance — consider adding more credit means you are below your own trigger level. Red is either Below zero or Out of credit. Metered features are paused.
• The warning bar is gone: once the balance is comfortably above your trigger level, the amber or red strip across the top of every page stops appearing.

Common mistakes

• Trying to top up below $20. Both the setup screen and the Add Credit window hold you to a $20 minimum, and the reload amount will not go under $20 either. You will see "Minimum top-up is $20" or "Reload amount must be at least $20".
• Setting the trigger level under $10. Save refuses with "Threshold must be at least $10 so reloads fire before you hit the floor".
• Expecting the balance to be spent exactly at zero. It is not — there is a small negative cut-off below zero so a call in progress is never chopped off mid-sentence. Your exact cut-off is written on the Credit Balance card. A balance showing a few cents in the red is normal, and auto-reload should clear it on its own.
• Reading a usage row as an overcharge. Small amounts are shown to four decimal places on purpose — a single outbound minute might read -$0.0253. That is two and a half cents, not two and a half dollars.
• Closing the low credit bar and forgetting. The X hides it for the rest of the day, and after three separate days of dismissing it, it stops coming back on its own. It will still force itself back if something genuinely gets blocked.
• Waiting for credit to pay the monthly plan. It does not. Your subscription invoice and your credit balance are two separate pockets — a full credit balance will not stop a plan payment failing, and vice versa.