Per-client credit budgets
A ceiling on the shared agency wallet, not a sub-wallet. Why the wallet can be full while a client is stopped, and what uncapped and zero each mean.
A per-client credit budget is a ceiling on the one shared agency wallet. It is not a sub-wallet: no credits are moved, none are set aside, and none are reserved for that client. Setting a budget says "this client may consume at most this much of the pool this period".
That distinction produces the one behaviour that surprises every agency the first time: the agency wallet can be full while one client is stopped.
Ceiling, not pot
graph TD
W[One agency wallet] --> S{A client spends}
S --> C{Has this client reached its ceiling?}
C -->|No| A[Allowed, drawn from the shared wallet]
C -->|Yes| R[Refused for THIS client, wallet untouched]
W --> O[The agency's own work: never capped by a client budget]Three consequences, and they are the whole page:
Topping up the wallet does not un-stop a capped client. The wallet was never the constraint. Raising that client's allocation is.
Unused allocation is not a reservation. A client with a large allocation that spends nothing is not holding credits back from anyone else.
The sum of allocations can exceed the wallet. That is legitimate: an allocation is a limit on one client, not a share of a total. If every client spent to its ceiling at once you would run out, and that is what the wallet balance is for.
The three states
| Setting | Meaning |
|---|---|
| No budget row, or no allocation set | Uncapped. This is the default, and every client starts here |
| A positive number | That client may consume at most that many credits this period |
| Zero | All spend for that client stops. Reversible, and the fastest way to stop a client costing money |
The default matters: the feature is a no-op until you set a number. Nothing changes for any existing client until you decide it should.
Zero is worth knowing about as a tool. It is the right answer for a client whose contract has paused, and it is instantly reversible, which suspending or removing a workspace is not.
What counts against a budget, and what does not
Counted: metered work on that client's Websites. Visibility checks, rank checks, shopping checks, audits, research, briefs, article generation, report narratives.
Not counted:
- The agency's own workspace. An agency is not a client of itself, and your internal work is never capped by a client allocation.
- Platform-funded onboarding. The free setup package is not customer money, and budgeting it would cap your onboarding against your own client's allocation.
- Refunded work. The wallet reserves before the work and releases in full on failure, so a failed action leaves no spend behind it and does not consume allocation.
The period
Allocations are per period, and the counters roll over lazily: they reset on the next spend after the period turns rather than being swept by a scheduled job.
The practical effect is none, except that a client who spends nothing for two months does not need waking up for the counters to be correct when they do.
The refusal a client budget produces
Client budget exceeded is one of four credit refusals in RankX AI, and it is
kept apart from the others because its remedy is different from all of them:
| Refusal | Remedy |
|---|---|
| Not enough credits | Add credits |
| Subscription not active | Reactivate the subscription |
| Client budget exceeded | The agency raises that client's allocation |
| Action not priced | Nothing you can do. A fault on our side |
Telling someone whose client is capped to buy credits sends them to do something that cannot work, which is exactly why the product keeps four reasons rather than one. See credits and metering.
Setting one sensibly
Start uncapped. Watch what a client actually consumes for a period before deciding what a ceiling should be.
Size it from the recurring spend, which is nearly all of it: that client's prompts times assistants times runs, plus keywords times checks, plus shopping prompts times two surfaces. Add headroom for the occasional audit and brief. See credits and metering.
Leave real headroom. A ceiling set exactly at last month's spend stops a client the first time you run an extra audit for them, and the refusal lands on your team mid-task rather than on a report.
Use zero rather than removal when a client pauses. Removing a Client Workspace removes its history; zero stops the spend and keeps everything.
Where to go next
- Credits and metering, for the wallet model.
- Credits and billing, for usage reporting.
- Client Workspaces, for the unit a budget is set on.
What clients can see
The seven per-workspace switches deciding which sections an Agency Client sees, why absent means allowed, and the two surfaces that are ungoverned.
White label
Putting your agency's brand on RankX AI. Custom domain, logo, colours and sending address, and the one place the platform domain still shows.