Billing accounts

A billing account holds a prepaid balance in EUR and pays for workspaces. Everyone gets a personal billing account when they are admitted to Overvis HMI, and it pays for their first workspace. Overvis administrators create further billing accounts, for example for a company that pays for several people’s workspaces.

Members and roles

A person can belong to several billing accounts, and a billing account can have several members:

• Owner: manages members and everything a manager can do. A billing account always has at least one owner.
• Manager: tops up the balance, redeems vouchers, sets low-balance alerts, and links workspaces to the account.
• Viewer: sees the balance, usage and ledger.

An owner can add people who share a workspace with them, by their email address, under Members on the account’s page. Any member can leave a billing account, except its last owner.

Every member sees the usage of all workspaces the account pays for, including the names of the endpoints, API keys, users, assistant chats and other items that used the most, also of workspaces they are not a member of.

Workspaces

Each workspace is paid for by exactly one billing account. A new workspace is paid for by your personal billing account, or by another account you own or manage when you choose one through the API. The workspace owner can move a workspace to another billing account they own or manage, under Workspace settings → Billing, also while the workspace is suspended. The move takes effect at the start of the next hour; the current hour is still paid for by the previous account. Moves appear in the workspace’s activity history as changes of its Billing account. The tab also links to the workspace’s Stored data, where its storage charges come from.

Once a negative balance can lead to suspension (not during the beta), every member of a workspace is warned while the account paying for it is below zero; see Suspended workspaces.

Balance and ledger

Amounts are in EUR. The balance is a prepayment for Overvis services only: it cannot be paid to third parties, transferred between people, or withdrawn. Every change of the balance is recorded in the account’s ledger, which is kept for accounting and never edited; a mistake is corrected with a further entry that names the entry it corrects.

Besides usage charges, Overvis records some entries by hand, each with its reason and, where there is one, a reference such as a payment or invoice number:

• Top-up: money received outside the app, such as a bank transfer.
• Manual charge: a service outside the price list, such as engineering support.
• Refund and commission payout: money Overvis pays back or pays out. The transfer itself is made by Overvis accounting; the entry takes the amount off the balance, which never falls below zero this way.
• Correction: a further entry that corrects an earlier one.

Each billing account has a negative limit: how far its balance may fall below zero. It is −10 EUR unless Overvis has agreed a different limit with you.

Your billing accounts are under Account settings → Billing. Each account’s page shows its balance and recent spend, its usage per workspace and per item, and its ledger; see Billing account page. An owner of the account paying for a workspace also sees its balance and recent spend in the workspace sidebar.

Topping up

The balance is prepaid. Owners and managers add to it with a card payment through Stripe, a voucher, or, for business accounts, a bank transfer that Overvis records. Stripe’s page takes cards and other payment methods it offers, such as BLIK. A card top-up credits the exact euros chosen, with no payment fees deducted; when you pay in another currency, Stripe shows the converted price and its exchange rate. The steps are in Manage billing, and the limits under Limits and rules.

Negative balance

Charges can take the balance below zero, down to the account’s negative limit of −10 EUR. When the balance falls below the limit, every workspace the account pays for is suspended within a few minutes: devices are not polled, automations and scheduled work stop, dashboards, reports, Setup and live controls are unavailable, and the assistant works there only at the Free level, which the workspace does not pay for. Nothing is deleted, and stored data accrues no charges while the workspace is suspended. Static VPN addresses stay reserved and are still charged.

The workspace’s members and the billing account’s owners and managers are notified. The suspended workspace’s page shows its owner the account’s balance and limit, with Open billing account and Change billing account; see Suspended workspaces. The workspaces resume on their own as soon as the balance is back above the limit, for example after a card top-up or a redeemed voucher, or when the owner moves a workspace to a billing account above its limit; scheduled work missed meanwhile is skipped. A workspace an Overvis administrator also suspended stays suspended until they enable it again.

During the beta, a negative balance has no consequences and no workspace is suspended for it.

Low-balance alerts

A prepaid balance runs out quietly, and running out suspends workspaces. Low-balance alerts warn the owners and managers before that happens. One alert looks at time: how many days the balance lasts at recent spending, where a sudden increase in spending warns sooner. The other looks at an amount, and stays as a banner until it is dismissed, so it is hard to miss. An alert does not repeat while the balance keeps shrinking, only after the balance has been raised and falls again. The defaults and exact rules are under Low-balance alerts; the steps to change them are in Manage billing.

Vouchers

A voucher is a prepaid code from Overvis, for example packed with a device. It adds its amount to the balance of one billing account, once. Every refusal looks the same, whatever the reason, and repeated refusals are throttled, so codes cannot be guessed by trying. The code format and limits are under Limits and rules; the steps are in Manage billing.

API and assistant

Everything on the billing pages is also in the API under billing.*; which key reaches which billing data is under API authentication. The assistant reads your balances, ledger and usage, so you can ask it what you were charged for or how long your balance lasts. It asks you before each change. For a top-up it opens Stripe’s payment page for you to pay yourself.

Prices

Prices include VAT and are public: the /prices page and the billing.prices API procedure show them without signing in, with changes already scheduled. Each kind of usage has its own price; What is charged explains what each one counts.

When prices go up, the owners of every billing account are told before the new prices take effect, normally at least 14 days ahead: in the app until then, and, when Overvis sends it that way, by email, SMS or Telegram as their notification settings allow. The notice opens the prices page.

Charges

Usage that happens at a moment, such as an assistant reply or an SMS, is charged right away. Usage that accumulates, such as endpoints and storage, is charged per hour. Every charge appears in the ledger. When charges happen lists which is which.

Deleting your account

When you delete your account, every billing account you are the last owner of is closed, and its other members lose access. To keep a billing account, make another person its owner first. The last hours of the workspaces you delete are charged first. The positive balance left is given up, which you confirm separately; it is not refunded. A closed account keeps its final balance for accounting. Workspaces of other owners that a closed account pays for keep running until its balance falls below its limit; their owners are notified and can bill them to another account under Workspace settings → Billing.