Managing credits

Credits are how Product Research bills usage. This page is the operational view: see your balance, top up, watch where credits go, avoid surprises.

In this guide:

• See your balance
• Read the credit ledger
• Top up
• Auto-recharge (and why we don’t have it yet)
• Soft and hard limits

Step 1: See your balance

The Product Research home page shows your balance at the top.

For a deeper view:

• Settings → Subscriptions & add-ons shows your monthly allowance and current consumption.
• Settings → Subscriptions & add-ons → Credit ledger shows every charge and refund as a line item.

Step 2: Read the credit ledger

The ledger is your source-of-truth audit trail.

Each row:

• Timestamp — when the action happened.
• Action — search, expand, product_detail, chat_search, export, history_rerun, or refund.
• Search UUID — the search this charge is associated with (when applicable).
• Amount — credits debited (negative) or refunded (positive).
• Reason — for refunds, why it was refunded (“search failed”, “export failed”, etc.).

Sort by timestamp to reconstruct what happened on a particular day.

Step 3: Top up

Two ways:

Upgrade your Hilal Software plan

Settings → Subscriptions & add-ons → Change plan. The new tier’s monthly allowance kicks in immediately, pro-rated for the rest of the cycle.

Buy a credit add-on pack

Settings → Subscriptions & add-ons → Add-ons → Product Research credit pack → pick a pack size.

Add-on credits never expire as long as your Hilal Software subscription stays active.

Step 4: Auto-recharge

Not yet available. The roadmap includes auto-recharge (top up automatically when balance falls below a threshold), but for today you’ll need to top up manually.

Soft and hard limits

The 0 balance state never locks you out of your data — only out of new spends.

When credits get refunded automatically

Hilal refunds credits without you asking when:

• A search fails server-side (5xx, internal error).
• An export job ends in failed status.
• A product-detail call times out before returning anything useful.

The refund appears in the ledger with a refund action and a reason. You don’t need to file a ticket.

Tips for credit-efficient research

• Use chat for low-stakes exploration. Conversational replies don’t cost credits; only triggered searches do.
• Open product details intentionally. First view costs a credit; repeat views are free for the rest of the cycle. So if you’ll come back, you’ve already paid.
• Use history re-fetch instead of re-running when you just want to look back at past results. Re-fetch is free; re-run is 1 credit.
• Filter aggressively before expand. Expand costs 2 credits — make the initial search precise so you don’t burn the expand on noise.

Troubleshooting

• Balance shows zero on a paid plan. Monthly allowance hasn’t been provisioned yet (rare). Wait a few minutes, refresh. Contact support if persistent.
• An expected refund didn’t show up. Refunds typically post within 30 seconds. If after 5 minutes the ledger doesn’t show it, file a support ticket with the search UUID.
• Bought a credit pack, balance not updated. Pack purchases sometimes lag if there’s a payment-processor handshake. Refresh; if still missing after 10 minutes, contact support.

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