Plan & Billing page

Plan & Billing is the Settings section for your account or organization’s commercial boundary. Open Settings → Plan & Billing; the section stays in the Settings frame while you move between its commercial tabs. Older billing and organization-settings links open this same section. It answers, in one place: which plan and terms that boundary is on, what each action costs, what has been used, what is funded and what is owed, and which agreements are in force — plus the one concrete step, if any, needed to complete billing setup or stay in good standing. Selecting Plan & Billing opens Overview for parent and standalone buyer or Seller Account organizations. From a child account, Plan & Billing points to the parent billing organization and opens its Overview; users without parent-admin access do not receive a billing entry point. Other commercial-boundary links for a specific task, such as reviewing invoices, open the relevant tab directly. A standalone Buyer or Seller account is its own commercial boundary until an administrator explicitly attaches it to an organization. Matching email domains or CRM classification never move billing, Terms of Service, standing, or administrators. After attachment, those responsibilities resolve to the parent organization. The page’s core commercial-boundary facts come from the Get billing account API. For an eligible commercial boundary, the Plan & pricing tab adds the one organization IU plan, complete Effective Rate Card, and renewal state from the canonical GET /api/v2/billing/iu-rate-card read. The older GET /api/v2/billing/storefront-rate-card path is a deprecated compatibility alias; it does not make the plan Seller Account-only. Every billing read uses the same organization and admin boundary.

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Choosing your first plan

An organization with no plan has not chosen one yet, and nobody is placed on a plan for it. Plan & Billing shows Select an IU plan as the next action, and Seller administrators are also asked to choose at every sign-in. Until the organization chooses, it cannot add accounts. A Seller’s brief responses are refused with the same next step only where Apostra has turned that on for the Seller, and buyer activity is not refused. Choosing the pay-as-you-go plan with no monthly commitment counts as choosing. See before you choose a plan.

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When charging starts

Accepting a paid plan starts billing; every organization with an accepted paid plan is charged. Billing follows the plan you accepted, starting from its effective date. Three things are worth knowing before you accept:

• The platform-access fee and the subscription fee are one recurring charge, not two separate fees.
• One organization has one plan and one IU wallet, covering both buying and selling work rather than a separate plan for each.
• Accepting a plan locks its terms for that term. The monthly price, included IUs, overage price, rollover rule, priced activities, and included product access are recorded as you accepted them, and a later price change does not rewrite an accepted plan.

A saved card covers eligible subscription and IU charges. It is not used to fund media.

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Who can see it

Plan & Billing describes money for the current commercial boundary, so it follows that boundary’s admin authority:

• Admins of an organization or standalone account see the full page for the boundary they administer.
• Admins of a child account who also administer its parent organization are forwarded to the parent’s page — billing, including authority over payout destinations, lives at the organization level. A child-only admin cannot open or change the parent’s billing information.
• Ordinary members don’t see the page or its Settings entry at all.
• Advertiser-scoped access and sponsored buyers don’t see the Settings entry, even as admins.

You do not need any internal or Apostra-side role to view your own effective commercial terms — admin standing on the relevant boundary is enough.

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Key figures

Available balance appears only for organizations that prepay and hold a funded balance. It is your funded balance minus any amount owed. Apostra does not grant buyer credit lines or use an Interchange credit limit to block a buy. If your organization pays on terms, Plan & Billing shows what you owe and your invoices instead of an available balance. Intelligence usage this period is the customer Intelligence Unit (IU) total for the current billing period. It matches the priced IU activity shown in Usage & credits and does not include internal AI-provider operating costs.

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The next-action banner

The banner at the top of the page shows the single most important thing to do next. On Overview, a four-step setup indicator puts that action in context: accept the current terms, select an IU plan when the organization is eligible, add billing details, then add a payment method. Each marker reflects the commercial boundary’s current facts, so a later step completed early stays complete if an earlier prerequisite reopens. Organizations that are not eligible for an IU plan continue directly to billing details. Established boundaries also receive funding and standing-recovery actions when needed: Only the highest-priority action is returned to the page and compact Plan & Billing app. When there’s nothing to do, the banner says so. When there is, it links to the tab or plan-review task that resolves it.

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Choose how to pay

On Payment & invoices, a business without a payment method can save a card to pay Apostra’s platform/IU fees by card, with no commitment. Plan & Billing no longer offers a credit application. Buying from sellers on consolidated billing needs only your billing details (payer name, street address, and country); it does not require a card or a credit line. If a seller separately extends payment terms for the media it sells you, that arrangement is between you and the seller — sellers decide credit on their own terms, not Apostra. For a business with one buyer account, this appears as one business billing setup; you do not need to manage an organization/account hierarchy. The business remains the owner of the card and billing history. Buyer accounts separately own operator identity, advertisers, and campaigns, so adding accounts later does not move or recreate the business’s payment authority. Eligible administrators may see an automatic login prompt with Choose an IU plan, Continue without a paid plan, and Decide later. Continuing without a plan suppresses that prompt only for the exact Rate Card revision; deciding later permits it again on the next login. The manual Choose an IU plan action on Plan & pricing remains available in both cases while the organization is eligible and has not accepted a plan.

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What each tab shows

For an organization that offers a sales agent to other sellers, a private Offer may include the paid operate-agents-for-clients feature key and its support or IU allowance. Sales agent registration, testing, and certification remain free and do not appear as purchased features. This entitlement also does not buy a buyer-visible badge, organic rank, or Apostra recommendation preference; Certified Partner verification and any labeled Featured Partner placement are separate program decisions. See Partner Program and agent operations.

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Your plan, what it includes, and switching

Plan & pricing opens with the plan your organization is on. A plan with no monthly commitment appears the same way as any other plan. The page reads every figure from your billing account, so the numbers match the published Organization IU Rate Card revision you are on; this documentation does not repeat them. Each fact appears once on the page. The plan you are on shows its name, monthly commitment, included IUs and IU usage price, rollover, renewal and change cutoff, and any upcoming plan you have already accepted. Under those it says what your plan includes, in the words of the plan’s own rate card revision. A plan’s terms can still record an account count; no plan limits how many Buyer or Seller Accounts you add (see Accounts in an organization). The plan’s product access and activity prices are in Terms and agreement, so they are not repeated. An organization with no plan is on none. The page shows the plan we suggest, labelled Suggested with No plan chosen, with its figures, what it includes, and what you pay for: the priced activities the plan charges for, each with its IU price and what counts as one unit. For a buyer these are the activities a buyer incurs, such as a media buy that is active in a billing period or turning on Enhanced Reporting. For a seller they are the activities a seller incurs, such as each brief you run and each non-social media buy that delivers, when the plan charges for them. Every activity the plan bills for is listed for the side that pays it (a charge both sides incur lists for either), using the activity’s own name, IU price and unit when the page has no dedicated sentence for it. An activity with no published price is not listed, each plan lists only what its own rate card charges for, and a plan that charges for nothing says so. What a plan with no monthly commitment charges for explains these charges. Nothing is billed under a suggested plan. Other plans (or Other available plans beside a suggested plan) lists every other plan available to your organization with its figures, rollover, benefits and charges. It never lists the plan you are on. If your plan is a custom agreement, the page keeps its terms visible, says it is changed with Scope3 and not here, and offers no list or switch; use Get in touch. If no other plan is available to your organization, the page says so plainly. When a private proposal is waiting for you to accept, its own table shows what it proposes in place of this list. Switching. An organization administrator sees Switch plan (Choose an IU plan when the organization is on none), which opens the plan chooser, where you pick the plan and accept it. Nothing changes until an administrator accepts, as described under When charging starts. Everyone else sees the plans and their benefits, and can ask an organization administrator to make the change. Because every accepted paid plan is billed, a switch in the middle of a billing period is not self-serve when either plan has a monthly commitment: Apostra staff make that change, so contact Apostra and nothing is changed until then. Choosing a new plan after your previous term ended, while that term’s final billing is still being completed, needs Apostra staff in the same way.

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Private offer signup links

Apostra may send one named person a private signup link for a reviewed private Offer. Opening the link in your browser:

1. The link opens an Offer invitation page. Opening it does not accept anything or charge you.
2. If you are signed out, choose Create an account or Sign in, using the email address the link was sent to. You come back to the page afterwards. If you sign in with a provider that opens a new tab or window, open the link from your email again.
3. The page shows the email you are signed in with and the organization the Offer will go to. If that is the wrong organization, switch accounts first, then open the link again.
4. Choose Add offer to Plan & Billing. The Offer is claimed and Plan & Billing opens on Plan & pricing. Opening the link again while signed in to the same organization takes you straight back; from any other organization the page says the link is not recognized or already used.

What you see in Plan & Billing: the Offer’s exact terms, plus the saved proposal it was issued from: its version, why the Offer fits your organization (where the proposal includes it) and the public sources it relies on. Download PDF renders that same saved version, marked Issued Commercial Offer – not yet accepted with the Offer version. When you are ready, select Choose an IU plan, pick a payment choice and accept. If Plan & Billing first asks you to review a governing agreement, do that first. Who can claim it: only the person the link was sent to. They must be signed in with that exact email address and be an administrator of their organization’s billing account. What claiming does: it connects your organization to the Offer and makes that exact Offer available here for review. The Offer carries the same proposal, terms and price that were reviewed before the link was sent. What it does not do: claiming never accepts the Offer, starts paid service or charges a card. You still review and accept the Offer, and choose how to pay, as described above. Limits:

• A link can be claimed once.
• It expires after the period set when it was sent, at most 30 days.
• Apostra can revoke a link or replace it with a newer one.
• If the published terms behind the Offer change after the link was sent, the old link stops working and a new one is needed.

When a claim cannot finish: you see the reason, for example an expired or already-used link, a different signed-in email, or a missing billing-administrator role. Sign in with the invited email, ask an administrator to claim it, or ask the person who sent the link for a new one. Some cases, such as an organization already connected to a different Apostra account, are recorded for the Apostra team to review, and you don’t need to retry. If the claim collided with another change, or we could not record it for review, you are asked to try again. How the link stays private: the link’s code sits after the # in the address, so your browser does not send it to Apostra when the page loads. The page removes it from the address bar straight away and keeps it only in that browser tab, for up to 30 minutes, while you sign in. Support: for questions about the Offer itself, contact the person who sent you the link. For help with the link or your account, email support@apostra.com with the email address the link was sent to. Do not send the link itself; support can see your organization’s link status without it.

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Media billing responsibility

The transaction’s billing party is the authority for who invoices and settles media:

• Agent — consolidated billing: the seller’s invoice comes to Apostra, Apostra finance bills you on your consolidated media bill and collects, and passes your payment to the seller once it arrives. Apostra does not guarantee payment to the seller or take credit risk on the seller’s media.
• Operator — the seller or connected platform bills the account operator directly.
• Advertiser — the seller or connected platform bills the advertiser directly.

For compatibility, agent projects to legacy Decisioned, while operator and advertiser both project to legacy Routed. That projection is lossy: Routed cannot distinguish operator from advertiser. Billing party remains the authority for who invoices; routingType does not say whether Apostra optimized the transaction or which adapter/execution path was used. See the campaign object for the canonical field relationship.

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Organization IU plan renewal

After an IU Rate Card is published and your commercial boundary has accepted a plan, an administrator for that boundary can select Manage renewal from Plan & pricing, then choose End plan at term before the displayed change cutoff. The current plan and price stay in force through the term end; the page shows a pending non-renewal and the exact timestamp the commercial boundary will return to its no-paid-IU-plan posture. This is an organization-wide decision because buyer, Seller Account, Apostra assistant, and other IU-rated workloads use the same plan. It does not terminate the platform agreement or change an existing accepted media-pricing arrangement. Individual capabilities can be disabled separately without ending the shared plan. Before that same cutoff, Reinstate renewal restores automatic renewal. Apostra retains every decision immutably; the renewal task shows the 500 most recent and labels each entry Renewal target or Earlier term, so an earlier decision cannot look like it controls the term being managed. It never edits the accepted term, and an earlier term cannot be changed after its successor has been created. Plan & Billing is the one human-facing home for billing: the organization settings entry redirects here, and the previous contract summary in account settings also redirects here, so one page answers every billing question. Some sections show a “coming soon” or non-billing state. Published price list contains only immutable activity terms in the commercial boundary’s accepted Rate Card. Activities under calibration shows separately labeled starting hypotheses for work whose cost and commercial terms are still being measured; those rows cannot debit the IU balance or alter an accepted contract. Deposits history lists your recent prepay deposits, straight from the platform ledger. Budgets, auto-top-up, and invoices populate as their underlying commercial capabilities launch.

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Money figures

Every money figure on the page renders from the ledger — balances, owed amounts, and payment state are never inferred or cached. The figures match what Get billing account returns, in the commercial boundary’s billing currency.

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For agents

The core account document is available to agents via GET /api/v2/billing/account — see Get billing account for its full contract, including service-token access and redaction. Organization IU plan and renewal facts come from GET /api/v2/billing/iu-rate-card. Agents should use the typed open_iu_plan_task tool to open and present the shared portable task. Showing, declining, deferring, or accepting the offer appends an idempotent response tied to the exact revision. Accepting a plan or changing renewal requires an organization administrator’s explicit confirmation; only the task may invoke those app-only commits, which are not model-visible. The storefront-named REST path and tools remain deprecated compatibility aliases.

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