Billing, budgets, and reconciliation

This page is for the person who pays for a Developer organizationThe Developer-side unit that holds Campaigns, data access, and funds's work or checks its books. It covers funding a CampaignA developer's data-production project and its settings, following what that Campaign reserved and spent, and collecting the records. Every amount belongs to one organization.

Open Billing

Open the account menu at the bottom left of the Developer portal and select Billing & Wallet. The page that opens is titled Billing.

The figures are those of the organization that is active in that menu. If you belong to several organizations, switch to the right one before you read a balance or pay.

Billing has four views:

The former Wallet page is now part of Balances, and an old Wallet bookmark opens Billing.

Read the two balances

Balances shows a USD balance card and a USDC balance card. They are separate holdings, and the page never adds them together.

The USD figures are tied together by one sum:

Total USD funds = Available to use + Reserved for campaigns + Held for disputes

When the card shows no Held for disputes line, that amount is zero.

A change that moves USD from one of these lines to another leaves the total where it was. The total changes only when USD enters the organization's balance or leaves it.

If a card says its balance could not be loaded, the figure is unknown rather than zero. Reload before you decide to pay. An organization that has no billing account yet sees a notice in place of the figures; its first Add USD opens the account.

What USDC is, and who converts it

USDC is a digital dollar: a token whose value is tied to the US dollar, so 1 USDC is meant to be worth 1 USD. It is sent to a digital wallet instead of a bank account, which is how Contributors receive their payouts. You do not need a wallet of your own, or any knowledge of crypto, to fund a Campaign.

Humanbased pays Contributors in USDC, and you pay in USD. When an accepted SubmissionThe record created when work is submitted is settled, Humanbased takes its cost in USD from Reserved for campaigns and credits the Contributor's reward in USDC. That conversion is part of the settlement, and Humanbased carries it out.

So a Campaign never draws on Available USDC: not at launch, not when work is paid, and not at close. Only the USD balance funds a Campaign.

Manage USDC is a separate, optional action, and most organizations never need it. It converts your own USD into USDC that the organization then holds on the platform. The Convert USD to USDC section below gives the steps.

Decide what to fund before launch

A Campaign launch reserves USD. The amount is the Campaign's whole budget cap, and it is taken from Available to use. The USDC balance is not counted.

So the decision before launch is one comparison:

1. In the draft, open the Test & Launch stage and go to its Pricing & Budget step. Budget cap (USD) is the amount the launch will reserve.
2. In Billing, open Balances and read Available to use.
3. If Available to use is the smaller figure, the difference is your shortfall. Add at least that much with Add USD.

You do not need to convert anything to USDC before launching. A conversion lowers Available to use, and the portal has no way to convert USDC back to USD.

The portal makes the same comparison on the Launch step. Its summary lists Budget cap and Wallet balance, and Wallet balance is the same amount as Available to use. While that amount is below the cap, the step shows "Wallet balance is below the $500 budget cap. Top up before launching." with your own cap in it, and the Promote & Lock button stays unavailable. The server checks once more when you launch, and a launch the balance cannot cover reserves nothing.

An illustration, for a Campaign whose budget cap is 500 USD:

The shortfall was 200 USD. The 150 USDC did not reduce it, and converting part of the 300 USD would have made it larger.

Add USD

Any member of the organization can add USD. The payment credits the organization's balance, whoever pays.

1. In Balances, select Add USD. The flow takes over the Billing page and names the organization it will fund.
2. On Amount & billing, choose a preset or enter your own figure in Amount · USD. The smallest amount is 1.00 USD.
3. Under Who should we bill?, choose the legal entity the receipt will name. The funds go to the organization whichever entity you choose. Then select Continue to payment.
4. On Payment method, paying by card on Stripe's page is the method offered. Select Review top-up.
5. On Review & pay, check Credit to, USD to add, and Bill to. Fees and tax are calculated by Stripe at checkout. Select the Pay button, which carries the amount, to open Stripe's payment page.
6. Pay on Stripe. Stripe sends you back to Billing, and the page asks the server what happened to the payment.

The page then shows one of these results:

A confirmed payment appears in Activity as Funds added, and its receipt is listed in Documents under Payment receipts.

Convert USD to USDC

Campaigns use USD directly. Convert only when you need USDC:

1. On the USDC balance card, select Manage USDC.
2. Enter the figure in Amount · USD: an amount above zero, with at most two decimal places. Only USD in Available to use can be converted; reserved USD is excluded, and a larger figure is refused before any rate is quoted.
3. Select Review conversion to see the rate, the fee, the USDC you receive, and both balances as they will be afterwards. Change amount goes back to the figure.
4. Select Confirm conversion within five minutes; the window counts the quote down. The result gives a Reference and both balances after the conversion.

If the five minutes run out, Get a new quote takes the place of Confirm conversion and quotes the same amount again; the rate may have changed. If confirming fails, the window says that nothing was converted and offers Try again. When only the reply was lost, the conversion may still have gone through. Try again sends the same request, so it returns that conversion instead of making a second one. A new quote is a new request: after a failed confirmation, check Available USDC and Activity for a conversion you did not see complete before you confirm a new quote.

The conversion goes one way only. The same window shows USDC → USD and Withdraw to a bank account as locked, so neither can be used.

Set and raise a Campaign budget

In a draft, enter Budget cap (USD) on the Pricing & Budget step. The same step lists the reward for each human step; to change a reward, edit the corresponding step in Builder. Where a platform service fee applies, the step shows it on its own line, added on top of the rewards, and the budget has to cover both. Launching reserves the whole cap; that page calls this locking the budget.

For a running Campaign, open Setup and its Budget & costs section. Increase budget on the Campaign's Overview leads to the same place.

1. Beside Total budget, read Wallet available. It is the organization's Available to use.
2. Enter the new total in Budget (USD). It has to be higher than the current budget.
3. Select Increase budget. Only the difference between the new total and the old one is reserved.

If Available to use is lower than that difference, the increase is refused and nothing is reserved. Add USD for the difference, then save again.

After launch the budget only goes up, and the reservation stays with the Campaign while it is live or paused. When the reserved amount can no longer pay for the next piece of work, the Campaign pauses itself. To continue, raise the budget and then select Resume; the Campaign stays paused until you do. Once an ended Campaign has finished closing, the unused part of its reservation returns to Available to use. Campaign states describes pausing and closing.

Reconcile one Campaign

A Campaign's money moves three times: it is reserved at launch, spent as work is accepted, and returned when the Campaign closes. Activity records each move as a row. Each row shows a name and, beneath it, a type.

So Reserved for campaigns changes in three ways. It rises at a launch or a budget increase, falls as Submissions settle, and falls again when a Campaign closes. Only the second is spending.

The Campaign ID joins these records. It is the part of the Campaign's address in the portal that follows /campaigns/. The name of a reservation row and of each single settlement row contains it. In the details of the return row, Reference reads close: followed by the Campaign ID. The exported file carries it in a campaign_id column.

To total one Campaign:

1. Copy the Campaign ID from the Campaign's address.
2. In Billing, open Activity, leave the filter on All activity, and select Export all CSV. The file lists every transaction of the current UTC month to date, one per line. For a Campaign that runs across months, export before each month ends.
3. Keep the lines whose campaign_id is your Campaign.
4. Add up amount for each type: lock is the reservation, release is spending, and refund is the return.

You can also separate the three on screen. Change the same filter to Reservations, Usage charges, or Refunds. In Grouped mode, several settlements for one Campaign on the same UTC day appear as one row, named after the Campaign and marked Daily total. Opening it lists the same transactions one by one, so count either the group or its lines. To find the charge for a single Submission, paste the Submission ID into the search box.

Continuing the illustration, the 500 USD Campaign accepts work costing 300 USD in total and is then ended:

The Campaign cost 300 USD. Adding the reservation to the settlements would report 800 USD for a Campaign whose budget was 500.

Do not subtract organization-wide figures from one Campaign's budget. The Usage charges total at the top of Activity and the figures in Balances cover every Campaign, data access charge, and agent call in the organization. For one Campaign's current position, open that Campaign's Overview and read Budget & obligations. It reports Campaign funds held, Outstanding obligations, and Available for new work for that Campaign alone.

Who can do what

Billing checks that you are a member of the organization. It does not check your organization role. Committing funds to a Campaign is checked separately, against your role on that Campaign.

A Campaign owner is the person who created the Campaign, or an Owner or Admin of its organization. Other members of the organization hold a lower role on the Campaign, and launching it or changing its budget needs an owner. A role recorded for you on the Campaign itself takes the place of this default.

So a colleague who can read every figure in Billing may still be unable to launch a Campaign or raise its budget. Organization roles are listed under Members in Organization. The Campaign's own members are listed in its Setup, under Team & access.

Check costs, receipts, and statements

In a Campaign's Budget & costs section, Cost breakdown lists Actual cost, Platform fee, and Total / record separately, together with the account's fee tier. Read the rate shown for that record instead of applying one historical rate to all work. Where the line reads Platform fee (20% of total), a 1 USDC Contributor reward gives a total of 1 ÷ (1 − 20%) = 1.25 USDC and a fee of 0.25 USDC. That illustrates the basis; the rate for each record is the one shown beside it.

Documents holds two kinds of record:

• Payment receipts lists each payment with its date and amount. View receipt opens a preview and Download PDF saves the file. A receipt confirms one payment.
• The statement table lists the months of one calendar year. The current month is marked In progress — draft and offers Generate PDF. A closed month is marked Available and offers Download PDF. For a month earlier than the listed years, pick it in the month field under the table and select Get statement.

A statement gives opening and closing balances, funds added, grouped usage, refunds, and conversions, with USD and USDC shown separately. The statement for a closed month is issued once and stays fixed; the one for the current month is a draft of the period so far. Download underlying transactions as CSV gives the current month's transactions behind it.

For a discrepancy you cannot explain, send support the organization, the month, the Transaction ID, the type, and the Campaign ID. Leave out full card details and access credentials.