Low balance and blocks

A business keeps working while its balance is above the reserve. When the money runs low, Talemo stops things in steps, and each step is announced to the owners by email (see Letters about money). The balance page shows the current step as a scale.

The steps

Everything works. The balance is above the reserve. The online admin, the assistant, incoming messages and the team work.

The online admin and the assistant are stopped. The balance reached the reserve. The online admin, the assistant, automations that use a model, and the helpers called through Claude or ChatGPT stop. Everything else works: the team signs in, records are kept, clients write, automations without AI run, and people can reply to clients in any channel. Email campaigns wait for a top-up. To the team the screen says that the assistant will answer when the owner tops up the balance.

Access is closed. The balance is zero or below. The team cannot get into the business. The assistant, automations and reminders to clients stop, and new messages from clients are not accepted. The data is kept. Only data storage is still charged, so the balance can go below zero, and the minus stays on the business. The money screens stay open, so the business can be topped up, and so do actions on the organization's level, such as closing the business. The scale says "5 days below zero".

In the archive. If the balance stays below zero for five days, the business is closed and its data goes to the archive. It can be brought back for another 30 days (see Closing and restoring a business).

How to come back

The owner tops up the balance (see Paying, and the payment link for Instagram). A top-up closes the minus first. When the balance is above zero again, access opens at once, and the online admin and the assistant work as soon as the balance is above the reserve. If the top-up was not enough, the page says how much is still missing. The owners get a letter that access is open.

What the team sees

A member of the team who cannot open the business sees Access to the business is closed, with the note that the owner knows and that the work comes back when the balance is topped up. Everything done before is still there.

Reading the step with MCP

talemo_get_billing reports the step of a business as ok, soft, hard or deletion_due, together with the balance, the reserve and what is available for the online admin and the assistant, each amount in dollars (*_usd) and in thousandths of a credit (*_millicredits), a credit being one cent. In the hard step it is the only one of the tools of a business that still works. A program cannot top up: it tells the person, who tops up on the Talemo website.

Tools and refusals

• A business pays for its work with money in dollars, and the step of its balance decides what a tool can do. talemo_get_billing shows the balance, the reserve, what is available for the online admin and the assistant, and the step: ok, soft (the online admin and the assistant stop until a top-up; tools without AI keep working), hard (of the tools of a business, nothing works but money until a top-up) or deletion_due. Every amount comes in dollars (*_usd) and in thousandths of a credit (*_millicredits). It works in the hard block too. talemo_ready, talemo_list_businesses, talemo_get_zone_currency and both tools of the guide work in every step.
• Status 402 with code billing.blocked means the hard block, and any tool of a business can give it: nothing works but talemo_get_billing until a person tops the business up on the website of Talemo, and params.deletesAt says when the business goes to the archive.
• Status 402 with code billing.credits_exhausted is given not by any tool but only by an operation that spends the balance on the online admin or the assistant: it means the balance is down to the reserve, they stop in the business until a top-up, and the tools without AI keep working.
• Neither is a failure. A tool cannot pay, so tell the person and name the step; do not retry the call.