Spend budgets

A spend budget is a monthly limit on what Caplo charges for production conversations, for the whole workspace, one agent or one channel. When charges reach a threshold, Caplo emails your Owners and Billing members. You can also choose to pause new conversations when a budget is reached.

Budgets live on the Spend controls page, under Usage & billing in the console.

What a budget counts

• Caplo’s charges for production conversations in the current UTC calendar month: platform fees and Caplo-managed AI usage. See How Caplo charges.
• Charges before the monthly allowance is subtracted, so a budget fills from the first charge of the month.
• Not live tests, evaluations or agent building, which are free.
• Not what your providers bill you for usage on your own keys.

Budgets reset on the first day of each UTC month.

Who can manage budgets

Owners and Billing members can create, change and remove budgets. Admins and Auditors can view them. Every change is recorded in the audit log.

Create a budget

1. Open Usage & billing then Spend controls and select New budget.

2. Enter a Name, for example “Support team”.

3. Under Applies to, choose Whole workspace, An agent or A channel. For an agent or channel, choose which one. You can’t change the scope later, and each scope can have only one budget.

4. Enter the Monthly amount (USD).

5. Under Alert at, choose one or more thresholds: 50%, 80%, 90% or 100%.

6. Under When the budget is reached, choose Alert only or Pause new conversations.

7. Select Create budget.

A new budget shows Not checked yet until Caplo has compared it with the month’s charges, which takes about a minute.

Alerts

Each threshold sends one email per budget per month, to every active Owner and Billing member of the workspace. The Alert delivery card lists who receives them, and Recent alerts shows the 50 most recent alerts with the amount spent when each was sent.

Pause new conversations

With Pause new conversations, when charges in the budget’s scope reach the monthly amount:

• New conversations in that scope are refused. For a workspace budget, that is every channel; for an agent or channel budget, only that agent or channel.
• Conversations already in progress continue and finish normally.
• The pause lasts until the next month starts, or until you raise the amount, switch the budget to Alert only or remove it.
• Owners and Billing members get an email saying new conversations are paused, even if you did not choose the 100% threshold.

Caution

Pausing affects your customers. Charges are checked about once a minute, so the total can go slightly over the amount before new conversations stop, and conversations in progress keep adding charges. Use a lower threshold alert to act before a pause is needed.

Read the page

The tiles at the top show Charges this month (production only), Forecast at month end at the month’s pace so far (shown once 10% of the month has passed), Budgets at risk and Alerts this month.

Each budget’s row shows what it has spent this month, its forecast, its thresholds, what happens at the limit and its status:

Status	Meaning
On track	Below the amount and not forecast to reach it.
Forecast over	Below the amount, but forecast to go over by month end.
Over budget	At or over the amount, with Alert only.
Paused	At or over the amount, and new conversations in its scope are paused.
Not checked yet	No charges have been compared with this budget yet.

Resume or change a budget

To resume conversations a budget paused, open it with Edit and raise the Monthly amount (USD) above the month’s charges, or switch it to Alert only, then select Save budget. New conversations are accepted again once Caplo applies the change, usually within a minute.

To remove a budget, open it with Edit and select Remove budget. Its alerts stay in the history, and any conversations it paused are allowed again.

Note

Settings then Billing & limits has an older Budget & limits panel that does not enforce anything. Use Spend controls for budgets.