What the AI costs you

The question behind this one is usually "am I about to get a surprise bill". You aren't. There is no per-question price, no meter running while you work, and no way for a busy Saturday to cost you more than a quiet one.

What there is instead is a monthly allowance, and a deliberate split between the AI you go looking for and the AI that comes with the job.

Two kinds of AI, two different rules

The everyday AI is the part you never pressed. The brief at the top of a client record. The clash flagged when you save an overlapping booking. The add-on suggestions on a cart. Twenty-three features out of more than two hundred, and they have one thing in common: if they stopped, the product would feel broken and you would have no idea why.

So they don't stop. They aren't drawn from your allowance at all.

The heavy AI is everything you asked for by pressing something — Ask, Design, Explain, Brief me, describing a booking in a sentence. That is what the monthly allowance pays for, and it's the right thing to pause when it's gone: you know you did the spending, and the ordinary way of doing the same job is still right there.

What the allowance is

Every plan carries one, sized to the plan:

Plan	Monthly AI allowance
Solo	$3
Starter	$8
Growth	$15
Scale	$28

Those are dollars of AI, not questions — different tools cost very different amounts, and a short answer costs a fraction of a long one. In practice a salon asking a handful of questions a day, drafting the odd campaign and explaining a few paychecks each period is nowhere near the ceiling. The way to reach it is a long afternoon of report questions, which is worth knowing before the afternoon rather than during it.

When it's gone

Nothing dramatic happens, which is the point:

• The heavy tool you pressed answers deterministically instead — the figures, the table, the plain version — or says it can't do that right now.
• The everyday AI keeps running.
• The rest of the product is completely unaffected. Booking, checkout, payroll and messaging have nothing to do with the allowance.
• Nothing is charged. The allowance is a limit, not a bill.

It resets at the start of each calendar month.

Where to see it

Settings → Your plan → AI allowance.

It shows the three things worth knowing — what your plan includes, what you've spent so far this month, and what's left — plus the date it resets. Opening it costs nothing: the figure is already stored, and reading it doesn't ask the AI anything.

Below that is the everyday AI, with nothing but the word Running. That is deliberate: it isn't drawn from your allowance, so there is no number of yours to show. If it ever said anything else, that would be a fault on our side to come to us about, not something you'd spent.

Owners and managers can both see it. Managers press most of the heavy AI, so hiding the meter from them would be hiding it from the person doing the spending.

Two things that are not the allowance

Being on a plan that doesn't include a feature is a different thing. Team AI — the tools that answer questions about your staff — is on Starter and up, and on Solo it isn't there to press. That's a plan boundary, not a spent allowance, and the screen says so differently.

A client opted out of AI is different again, and it's per client rather than per salon. See what the AI is told about your clients.