Credits & Billing

Credits are GMBMantra's metering currency. Every AI-generated action — a review reply, a post draft, a heatmap scan, an AI insight — pulls from your credit balance. New accounts get 100 credits free at signup, applied automatically the first time you log in.

Credits live on a CreditAccount row keyed to your user — balance, totalPurchased, totalUsed, and a one-time signupBonusApplied flag. There's no monthly subscription on the credit side and no expiration: you buy credits when you need them, and they sit on your account until you spend them. Manual actions (typing your own review reply, syncing data from Google, viewing the dashboard, clicking through analytics) are all free — credits only meter the AI work and the publishing/scan actions that hit external APIs on your behalf.

Buying & Tracking Credits

1. 1

   Open /dashboard/credits

   The credits page is the single source of truth for everything billing-related on the per-user side. The credit status bar at the top of every dashboard page also has a Buy Credits shortcut and an Earn Free link that jumps straight here.

2. 2

   Review balance, history, and usage

   The page shows your current balance, totalPurchased, and totalUsed, plus a transaction history (every purchase, deduction, signup bonus, and referral grant) and a usage breakdown by feature so you can see whether credits are flowing into review replies, posts, heatmap scans, or insights.

3. 3

   Top up via the purchase grid

   The purchase grid lists fixed-credit packs — pick one, complete checkout, and the credits land in your balance (and bump totalPurchased) once payment confirms. Full per-pack pricing lives at /pricing.

4. 4

   Earn free credits via referrals

   /dashboard/credits/earn is the referral page — share your link, new signups credit your account when they activate. This is the only path to free credits beyond the one-time signup bonus.

Key Concepts

Per-user balance — credits are not pooled

CreditAccount is keyed on userId with unique: true. Every user account has its own balance. Agencies do not share a master credit pool with their clients: AI replies, AI posts, heatmap scans, and insights run for a client are deducted from that client's account. If you're an agency operator who wants to keep a client's balance topped up, you do it via impersonation (/agency/clients/[clientId] → Impersonate) and top up under their account, not yours.

What each action costs

These are the seeded credit prices (packages/seedCreditPricing.ts). They're stable values, but the live source is always /dashboard/credits — if anything below ever drifts, trust the dashboard.

| Action | Cost | | --- | --- | | AI review reply (auto or on-demand) | 5 credits | | AI post — single draft | 5 credits | | AI post — 7-day batch generation | 20 credits per batch | | Post publish to Google | 1 credit | | Heatmap scan (per keyword) | 75 credits | | AI Portfolio Insights | 5 credits per location | | Sentiment analysis | 1 credit per review | | Signup bonus (one-time, automatic) | +100 credits |

Manual review replies, manual post composition, syncing reviews / performance / photos from Google, and reading any dashboard page are all free.

Signup bonus — 100 credits, one-time, automatic

The first time you log in, the credit service stamps your CreditAccount with +100 and flips signupBonusApplied: true. The flag is the guard — even if you sign up, delete your account, and come back, the bonus only applies once. There's no code to enter and no trial timer; it's just sitting there in your balance after first login.

Low balance — paid AI actions pause, free actions keep working

When balance hits zero, the credit-status bar at the top of every dashboard page turns red and paid AI actions stop firing:

• Auto-reply generates skipped drafts.
• Auto-post stops generating new posts.
• Heatmap scans refuse to start (the confirmation dialog blocks).
• Portfolio Insights refuses to run.

What keeps working: Google syncs, the dashboard, manual review replies, manual post composition, and read-only analytics. Nothing breaks — generation just pauses until you top up at /dashboard/credits or earn credits via the referral page. Once your balance is positive again, auto-reply and auto-post resume on the next scheduled run.

Refunds and expiration

Credits do not expire. There's no monthly burn-down, no rollover penalty — what you buy stays on your account until you spend it. There is no automated self-serve refund flow today. If you have a billing issue (duplicate charge, failed action that shouldn't have deducted, etc.) email support@gmbmantra.ai directly and we'll handle it manually.

Frequently Asked

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