Accounting & Billing

As an Owner or Operations admin — the two roles with financial inspection and accounting authority — you manage two related but separate financial areas:

• AI Credits — the school's prepaid platform balance for AI generation, assessment, Exam Task licensing, Marketplace, transcription, recording, and similar platform services. (Note: While viewing financial books is restricted, any active staff member can purchase AI credit top-ups for the school to unblock teaching tools).
• Accounting — the real-money and student ledger for lessons, homework, exercises, payments, refunds, and manual credits/debits in the school's configured currency.

For current rates, see Pricing. For teacher-facing school AI Credit usage, see Billing & AI Credits and the Glossary.

AI Credits

Your organization has one shared AI Credit balance. School-funded platform actions use it unless a school plan allowance or another explicitly shown coverage source applies. School-funded AI actions include lesson generation, exercise creation, Ask AI PDF Page Recognition (5 credits per newly recognized page; free organization-wide reuse of pages marked Saved), writing and speech assessment, live session recording, and post-session summaries. Student-paid flows use the student's personal balance instead.

Checking Your Balance

Your current school AI Credit balance is available from the School usage and analytics areas, accessed via the School menu in the fixed 88 px left navigation rail:

1. School usage (/platform/my-school/ai-credits) — balance, budgets, and usage.
2. Analytics → Overview (/platform/my-school/analytics) — a summary alongside other school metrics when shown.
3. Accounting (/platform/my-school/accounting) — the centralized student and real-money ledger.

The balance breakdown shows:

• Current balance -- AI credit available to spend right now.
• Lifetime purchased -- total AI credit ever bought.
• Lifetime spent -- total AI credit consumed.

Low-balance alerts

Set the school's low-balance threshold in Accounting → Settings (/platform/my-school/accounting?tab=settings), available to the Owner. The current threshold is shown in the settings; this page does not hardcode a default or price.

When the school's shared AI Credit balance drops below the threshold, active Owners receive the configured notice. This alert is not sent to Operations admins or Academic leads.

• The alert fires at most once per dip, so a balance sitting just under the threshold does not keep sending mail.
• It re-arms only after a top-up lifts the balance back above the threshold.
• Schools that have never bought AI credit are never alerted.

Exam Task capacity and usage

Exam Tasks consume two kinds of school value:

• the organization's pooled Exam Task capacity; and
• a published per-Task licence charge, in addition to ordinary AI-generation usage.

The capacity pool is shared across the school's supported exam formats. It is not a separate allowance for each exam. When a teacher starts generation, the platform checks and temporarily reserves the requested capacity and the related school AI Credit exposure. Successful or partial generation settles only the Exam Tasks that were actually produced; failed or abandoned work releases unused capacity and reserved value.

Owners and Operations admins can review this in School usage → Exam sections (/platform/my-school/ai-credits?tab=exam-sections). The usage report can be filtered and reviewed alongside the school's other AI Credit activity. Exam Task licence charges are identified separately from ordinary AI-generation charges so the ledger can be reconciled.

The Lesson Builder warns when a request is larger than the available school resources. If generation cannot be admitted, the teacher should contact an Owner or Operations admin. Current licence and generation rates are published on Pricing.

Educator plans and graduated seat metering

Organizations operate on one of three educator plans:

• Free Plan — Includes a free seat allowance (5 active student seats by default, or a custom higher quota configured for your school through platform support or enterprise agreements) with video recording disabled. Free organizations receive monthly top-ups subject to the regular school activity or purchase rules.
• Solo 30 Plan — Designed strictly for a single staff member (1 educator). Includes 30 active student seats under a flat monthly fee (charged immediately upon purchase and at the start of each monthly billing cycle). Active students beyond 30 are metered daily and billed in arrears at the end of the month using standard graduated volume bands. Solo 30 is month-to-month only (no annual commitment option). It includes full organization perks, such as live session video recording and unlimited Cards vocabulary training for all active members across all domains.
• School Plan (formerly Paid plan) — Designed for multi-teacher schools and teams. Features graduated per-seat volume bands (with 5 free seats included), available on Month-to-month or 12-month commitment terms. It also includes live session video recording and unlimited Cards vocabulary training for all active members.

For current rate tiers and published volume pricing, see Pricing.

Monthly AI Credit Top-Up Rule

Schools on all plans (Free, Solo 30, and School) are replenished up to 300 AI credits on the 1st of each calendar month when meeting the prior-month activity or purchase rule:

• Activity rule: Finished at least 6 class lessons during the previous calendar month, with the most recent lesson conducted within the last 7 days of that month.
• Purchase rule: Purchased more than $10 in AI credits during the previous calendar month.

Newly registered schools receive their first 300-credit grant unconditionally upon registration to explore lesson generation and classroom features.

The One-Staff Rule on Solo 30

Because Solo 30 is designed strictly for individual educators:

• Eligibility: Only schools with strictly 1 active staff member and 0 pending staff invitations can purchase Solo 30. If multiple staff members or open staff invites exist, purchase is refused ("The Solo 30 plan is available only when the school has one staff member").
• Staff limit enforcement: While on Solo 30, the Team page displays an informational banner ("Your school is on the Solo 30 plan, which covers a single staff member") and blocks inviting additional staff, generating staff invite links, re-enabling disabled staff, or promoting users to staff roles until the school switches to the School plan.

Sixth-Seat Activation Choice

When a single-staff Free school reaches its 6th active student:

• The seat activation panel presents an explicit choice between Solo 30 and School (Month-to-month or 12-month commitment).
• Neither option is pre-selected until an administrator chooses one.
• If the school already has multiple staff members or a custom seat allowance, only the School plan is offered.

Switching from Solo 30 to School

When a solo school expands and needs to add teachers:

• An administrator initiates the upgrade in Billing (/platform/billing) by selecting Switch to School to add teachers.
• The billing switch is scheduled for the end of the current monthly billing period.
• The single-staff limit is lifted immediately: administrators can invite teachers right away ("School starts on [date]. Until then you pay the Solo 30 plan, and you can add teachers now.").
• Plan cancellation is locked until the scheduled switch completes.

How active seats are metered

• A student is counted once per organization, regardless of how many individual courses or classes they join. Direct class participants and course-enrolled students share the same school seat metering.
• Active student enrollments and class memberships are metered daily by the platform and averaged across your billing cycle.
• Volume discounts apply automatically across graduated seat bands (rates drop as student volume increases; see Pricing for published rate tiers).
• Seat usage is billed as real-money subscription invoices through Stripe or Postpaid Bank Transfer, not deducted from prepaid AI credits.

Seat Summary Strip & Cost Calculator

The seat summary strip at the top of the student roster and billing surfaces displays:

• Active students — current metered student count.
• Free seats left — remaining seats in your allowance (hidden on Solo 30, since 30 seats are included in the flat monthly fee).
• Next seat — projected rate for the next added student.
• Projected invoice — estimated total for the current billing cycle.

Note that Solo 30 is excluded from the per-seat cost calculator dropdown, because it operates on a flat monthly fee for its base 30 seats rather than graduated per-seat tiers.

Multi-School Billing Isolation

If your organization manages multiple schools (such as distinct branch campuses or language departments):

• Independent Billing Subscriptions: Each school maintains its own independent billing subscription, seat counts, and Stripe customer record.
• Isolated Invoices & Allowances: Card-sponsored perks, free seat allowances, and invoice histories are bounded strictly to the individual school. Expanding seats or updating payment details in one school does not cross-affect the billing status of sister schools.

Card readiness and scoped billing hold

• When your school approaches its free seat allowance (e.g. at 4 active students on a standard 5-seat allowance), the dashboard displays a reminder that a payment method is needed for further growth.
• Once the free seat allowance is reached, adding another student requires confirming payment terms. Newly invited students beyond the allowance are safely held in Pending billing status. They do not receive an invitation email or access materials until an Owner or Operations admin adds a payment method or completes seat checkout. Once resolved, pending invites activate and send automatically without having to re-invite.
• Overdue balance safety: If a subscription payment is overdue, the hold applies only to adding new students above the free allowance. It never blocks active teaching, lesson editing, course creation, or access for your existing students.

Postpaid bank-transfer invoicing

Approved organizations can configure postpaid bank-transfer invoicing. Invoices are generated at period close and stored securely with downloadable PDF receipts and full transaction search history under Billing → Invoices (/platform/billing?tab=invoices).

Per-Member AI Credit Budgets

You can give an individual member a weekly or monthly AI credit limit, so that one person's AI usage cannot drain the school's shared balance.

Setting a budget

Open School usage (/platform/my-school/ai-credits) in the sidebar and switch to the Budgets tab. Find the person in the table and use Set Budget — or Edit Budget if they already have one. The dialog has three fields:

• Budget limit — how much the member may spend in one period.
• Period — Weekly or Monthly. Monthly is the default.
• Alert admins at % of limit — how full the budget must be before managers are warned. The available range and current default are shown in the dialog.

Managing budgets follows financial access: seeing the budgets tab needs access to financial reports, and creating or changing a limit needs the right to manage AI credit. In practice, Operations admins and the Owner can set budgets.

• Weekly periods start on Monday. Monthly periods start on the 1st.
• Usage resets when a new period begins, and the limit applies again from zero.

What the Member Sees

The member's sidebar shows their own usage against the limit instead of an unrestricted school balance:

• an Approaching limit warning when the configured warning state is reached
• a Budget exceeded state when the limit is reached

What Happens at the Limit

Once a member reaches their limit, further AI credit charges for that member are refused. The message names the amount already spent and the limit for that week or month. Teaching and course work continue as normal — only paid AI actions stop.

Charges resume when the next weekly or monthly period starts, or as soon as you raise the limit.

The dialog the blocked member sees offers a Contact Admin button. It opens the platform's Messages page so they can write to you and ask for a higher limit — nothing is sent automatically, so the request arrives as an ordinary message. (Managers who hit their own budget see Manage budgets instead, which opens the budgets tab.)

Manager Alerts

Managers are alerted once per period when a member crosses the Alert admins at % of limit value configured for that budget. The alert re-arms with the new period.

Buying AI Credits

Navigate to School usage (/platform/my-school/ai-credits) or Billing (/platform/billing) to buy AI Credits for your organization.

Pricing

Current purchase minimums, bonus credit, and rates are shown on the Pricing page and at checkout.

Payment Methods

The platform accepts:

• Credit and debit cards -- Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and UnionPay.

All card payments are processed securely through Stripe. Receipts are generated automatically and available in your transaction history.

Payment Card Management (/platform/billing#payment-card)

Billing administrators (Operations admins and Owners) can review and update the school's saved card on the dedicated Payment card row:

• Navigate to /platform/billing#payment-card.
• Alternatively, jump directly via Profile menu → Payment card or by hovering over the yellow top-bar AI Credit balance pill and clicking the card link.

The payment card row displays:

• A realistic card visual showing the saved card's brand, the last four digits, and its expiration date.
• Accepted card logos for Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and UnionPay.
• A Set up card button (if no card is linked yet) or a Replace card button to switch to a new payment method smoothly.

Bonus Codes for the School Pool

A bonus code addressed to school managers credits the school's shared AI Credit pool rather than a personal balance. Redeem it on the School usage page.

How codes are entered, what each response message means, and the one-redemption-per-person rule are the same for everyone — see Redeeming a bonus code.

Referral Rewards

Referral codes are a school-staff feature. Students do not issue them — a student who looks for one is told that referral codes are for school staff.

Getting Your Code

Open Billing → Referrals (/platform/billing?tab=referrals). Each staff member has one code per school.

• The code is a share code, so several people can sign up with the same one.
• It is bound to the school it was created in.
• It expires 30 days after it is issued. Asking again reissues a fresh code.

Who Gets What

The referrer's reward never lands on a personal balance. It always goes to the shared pool of the school the code belongs to.

A paid subscription counts as a first purchase. The invited person has 90 days from the day they use the code; if they have not bought anything by then, the reward expires unpaid.

You are notified twice: when someone signs up with your code, and again when the school pool is actually credited.

Limits

• You cannot use your own code.
• Once a code is pending or completed for an account, a second code cannot be applied to that account.
• A pending referral belongs to the school the code was issued in. Reissuing your code does not move it, and if you later leave that school the reward is still paid into that school's pool.

For the invited person's side of this, see Referral welcome credit.

Accounting and AI Credit history

Review financial activity across four distinct surfaces:

• School usage (/platform/my-school/ai-credits) — prepaid AI Credit balance, per-member budgets, and Exam Task section usage (accessed from the School menu in the fixed 88 px left rail).
• Billing (/platform/billing) — subscription plans, seat invoices, referral codes, and the automatic AI charges ledger (accessed from the More menu in the left rail).
• Accounting (/platform/my-school/accounting) — school-wide student and real-money ledger entries (lessons, homework, exercises, refunds, and manual adjustments) in the school's configured currency (accessed from the School menu).
• Student Accounting (/platform/students/[id]?section=finance) — individual student balances, manual adjustments, and Stripe card payment requests managed directly from each learner's Student Card.

You can export Accounting transactions and school payments to CSV for your external financial records by clicking Export to CSV on the Accounting ledger.

AI Credit Transaction Types

The AI Credit history can include:

School/Student Ledger Entries

School/student ledger entries are separate from AI credit. They are shown in the organization's configured currency and affect school lesson balances, not the prepaid AI credit balance.

Manual school ledger credits, debits, lesson charges, homework charges, and exercise charges appear in this stream with the reason or label configured for the school workflow.

AI Credit Ledger

Some AI credit leaves the school pool without anyone clicking Buy. The AI credit ledger answers the question "nobody bought anything, so why did the balance drop?".

Open Billing (/platform/billing) and select the Ledger tab. Only Operations admins and the Owner can see it, and only for the school they are currently working in.

The ledger covers three categories of charge, each with its own total and debit count:

Filter by date range and page through the results. The grand total covers only the charges listed here — it is a sum of the ledger, not a reconciliation of the whole balance.

Managing Real-Money Transactions and Refunds

You can manage real-money transactions directly from the platform. If your school charges students in a supported currency, you can process full or partial refunds from the Accounting (/platform/my-school/accounting) ledger. Select a completed transaction and choose Issue Refund. The refund is processed to the student's original payment method and reflected in your CSV exports.

Student Accounting on the Student Card (/platform/students/[id]?section=finance)

Staff with financial permissions (Owners and Operations admins) can inspect and manage individual student balances and payments directly on the Student Card (/platform/students/[id]) under the Accounting tab (?section=finance).

Plain Balance Card

The top of the student accounting view features a plain balance card designed for immediate clarity:

• Large Numerals: Student balance is displayed in prominent digits, styled in red ink when the student owes money, or normal ink when prepaid or zero.
• Status Sentence: Explicitly states the student's current account balance in plain English:
  • "The student owes the school €40."
  • "The student's balance holds €80."
  • "The student owes nothing, and their balance is empty."
• Lifetime Totals: Displays historical transaction sums ("Over all time, … was added to this balance and … was charged to it.").
• Three Action Buttons:
  • "Top up balance": Record an offline payment or cash deposit received outside the platform.
  • "Charge the balance": Log a manual debit against the student's balance for special learning materials, registration fees, or course adjustments.
  • "Request card payment": Generates a secure Stripe payment request link. When issued, the student is notified immediately through:
    1. An in-app push notification
    2. An email invoice with a direct payment button
    3. A "Needs your answer" card on their Today dashboard
    4. An entry in their student Wallet under "School payments"

Day-Grouped Transaction History

Beneath the balance card, the ledger lists all balance activity for that student:

• Filters: Switch between All transactions and Card payments, or narrow down by date period.
• Daily Headings: Transactions are grouped chronologically under day headers (Today, Yesterday, or specific calendar dates).
• Running Balance: Each entry displays the transaction type, description, amount, payment method, and a running balance marker ("Balance after: …").

School/Student Ledger Configuration

Organization Currency

Each organization has a configurable currency code (e.g., USD, EUR, PLN) that determines how monetary values are displayed throughout the platform. Set this in Accounting → Settings (/platform/my-school/accounting?tab=settings).

Organization Defaults

Set default school ledger costs that apply to all new enrollments in your organization:

• Default lesson cost -- amount charged per completed class lesson in your school's configured currency.
• Default homework cost -- amount charged per homework assignment in your school's configured currency.
• Default exercise cost -- amount charged per exercise set in your school's configured currency.

These settings, along with the low AI credit balance threshold, are configured in Accounting → Settings (/platform/my-school/accounting?tab=settings).

Historical student balances and ledger transactions remain available for review, even after a student's access changes.

Override Hierarchy

Costs can be overridden at multiple levels:

1. Organization default -- the baseline.
2. Course-level override -- set by the teacher when creating a course.
3. Enrollment-level override -- set for a specific student in a specific course.

The most specific override always wins. This lets you offer different pricing for premium courses, scholarship students, or promotional periods.

Cost Visibility & Privacy

To help keep your organization's financial data private from general teaching staff, Locuto.PRO restricts who can see AI credit balances and school lesson costs:

• Teachers and Academic leads: cannot see individual student balances or the lesson costs associated with lessons or enrollments. Financial visibility is deliberately separated from teaching and academic roles.
• Owners and Operations admins: have full visibility into costs, balances, and financial reports.

Financial visibility follows a person's role and can't be granted individually. To let someone see finances, make them an Operations admin (or Owner). See School Roles & Permissions.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know when to buy more AI credit?

Monitor your balance on the dashboard and purchase manually when the balance drops below a comfortable level.

Can I get a refund on purchased AI credit?

Unused AI credit may be eligible for a refund. Contact the Locuto.PRO support team with your transaction ID. Refunds are processed to the original payment method.

How do I set different costs for different courses?

Teachers can set custom costs when creating a course. These override the organization defaults. Owners and Operations admins can also edit course-level costs from the course detail view.

Are there discounts for large organizations?

Yes. Contact the sales team to discuss current enterprise options for larger organizations. Package names, thresholds, and volume discounts can change, so use the current sales or pricing page as the source of truth.

How do I track how much a specific teacher is costing?

Navigate to Analytics → Teachers (/platform/my-school/analytics?tab=teachers) or Team (/platform/my-school/team) to view teacher metrics including lessons conducted and enrollments. Use School usage or Accounting, depending on the activity, to review the relevant history.

Can I set spending limits for individual people?

Yes, for Teachers and Owners. Set a weekly or monthly AI credit budget from School usage → Budgets (/platform/my-school/ai-credits?tab=budgets). Academic leads, Operations admins, and students cannot be given a budget and are not listed in that table.

When a budget is set, the person's sidebar shows their remaining budget instead of the organization AI credit balance, and they are warned as they approach the limit. See Per-Member AI Credit Budgets, and AI Credit Budgets for what the teacher sees.