NOTE: You will need to be an owner, admin, or user with billing privileges to have full access to all of these actions.
Section 1: What is a message credit?
Basically, a credit is a unit of cost used when sending or receiving text and voice messages.
THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF CREDITS
Non-rollover (NRO) credits are your monthly or yearly credit allotment. They do not roll over automatically and expire according to your billing cycle. Unused monthly NRO credits will expire monthly. Unused yearly NRO credits will expire yearly. This is the default for all plans.
Forever Rollover (FRO) credits never expire. All one-time purchased credits are FRO credits. Also, NRO credits unused at the end of the billing cycle and protected by a Rollover Protection (ROP) subscription are converted to FRO credits. Rollover credits have a big advantage: even if your account expires, your rollover (FRO) credits remain. They are removed only when an account is marked as spam. So if you changed your mind, they would be waiting for you when you returned to PastorsLine. All plans can purchase an ROP subscription which guarantees your credits will never expire.
HOW WOULD NRO VS FRO CREDITS WORK?
NRO (non-rollover) credits will be noted clearly on your account. These credits work like money in a checking account—the credits are 'deposited' by PastorsLine each month or year; they are 'withdrawn' by you when you message your people.
FRO (forever rollover) credits are like your savings account at your bank—they are basically 'inactive'. They are used last and only if your 'checking account' NRO credits are depleted. In other words, if you have no more NRO credits, PastorsLine will use your FRO credits to cover the costs of your messages.
You can switch, upgrade, or downgrade at any time and never lose your FRO credits. And even if you cancel, you can come back, add any plan and access those credits.
All plans can purchase a ROP (rollover protection) subscription which guarantees your credits will never expire.
All one-time purchased credits are FRO and thus, will never expire.
To sum up, you can protect all of your credits by purchasing a ROP subscription.
2023.12.15 UPDATE: Additional reminders
To help you better manage your credits, PastorsLine has added some helpful messages.
If you have rollover protection...
On your Billing page, hover over the question mark on the Non-Rollover Credits (Checking) line to see the following message: 'Any remaining unused credits at the end of the billing cycle will be transferred back to the main account's FRO (savings) section.'
If you do not have rollover protection...
On your Billing page, hover over the question mark on the Non-Rollover Credits (Checking) line to see the following message: 'These credits will expire at the end of the billing cycle on [date]'
HERE IS CURRENT PRICING INFORMATION
MMS / Picture messages:
-These cost 2 credits (per person you send it to). (2.5 credits if sent from a toll-free number)
Texts / Calling:
NOTE: Credit costs vary by country. Check our website international page for non-US rates.
IN THE U.S.
Incoming texts (Receive a text): Free (no cost).
Outgoing texts (Send a text): 1 credit per 160 characters or less per text sent (per person).
Toll-free outgoing texts will cost 1.5 credits per 160 characters per text sent (per person).
Incoming calls, live answered = 2 credits / min
Outgoing calls - 2 credits per minute.
Forwarded calls - 3 credits per minute.
***It is 1 credit more IF the caller left a voicemail recording - fixed charge per voicemail.
***It costs 4 credits more to transcribe the voicemail to text - fixed charge per voicemail.
Send a voice message (Voice Broadcast) - 2 credits per minutes plus machine detection if used. The cost of machine detection is an additional flat rate of 0.5 credits per number called.
Send a video - It's treated as a MMS message where it's maximum 2 credits for US/CA per video message regardless of the length of the texts included. Video length is 1 MB for local numbers or 0.6 MB if it's the shortcode or the toll-free. The maximum length is 25 seconds per video.
Reprocessing from toll-free numbers is now 1 credit per message [160 characters]. This is a setting you control (on or off).
The use of the shared short code is optional as it’s being replaced by the A2P numbers. You can turn on the short code use in your account by either paying an additional $5/m or reserving at least one premium short code keyword. [NOTE: You do not need the shared short code as before. A2P is now implemented which means less carrier filtering.]
The costs shown above are estimates. It could be more, but it could also be less. Make sure you have enough credits to cover you if the cost does go up into the next rate.
Here is another way to look at it...
How do you know how many credits your message is using?
You are in the message box. Let's look at the Credit Estimate info (brown box in image below). As you type your message, the Credit Estimate value will change.
To find out more about the calculation, click on the ? (turquoise arrow in image above). The calculation menu will open, showing you more details about the cost.
Anywhere you type a message will have a similar "ticker" to let you know how many credits and characters your message is using.
The voice broadcast also lets you know how many credits it will use before sending it.
For Individuals (see brown box in image below)
For Groups (see gold box in image below)
Section 2: What happens if I run out of credits?
We notify you before this happens. One of the ways is through banners and pop ups on the PastorsLine app. Below are some examples:
If you are a user
Note the blue banner at the bottom of the page.
If you are an admin
Note the blue banner .
Note the pop up message
If you are an owner or admin on your mobile
You can change your Credit Threshold in User Settings-Notifications so we can alert you to take action. We don't automatically auto-bill for overage. The user sending the message will receive 1 email per day when you are low in credits.
If you run out of credits but have an ongoing campaign, you will still be able to receive calls and texts. You just wouldn't be able to send messages or make calls. This puts the control in your hand.
We’ve got a choice of ‘credit buckets’ to choose from. They match the per-month plan amount and price. Alternatively, upgrade your plan.
Section 3: PastorsLine says I don’t have credits to assign, but I think I do.
Where did those credits you thought you had go to? How does PastorsLine figure out how many credits you have left to assign?
NOTE: The credit restrictions apply only to users. You can add unlimited admins without any credit restrictions. So, you should not encounter this situation when adding admins.
Situation: You want to add a new user and assign that user some credits.
Issue: You click on Add a New User. When you try to give your new user some credits, the PastorsLine system gives you an alert limiting your credit allotment or an alert which says that all your available monthly credits have been assigned.
Let's look at an example:
 | The Total Company Credits are 120266 credits at the moment. So, it appears that I could assign all of them to my new user. |
| I begin typing in that number. I successfully type in "1202". As soon as I type in the "6" [12026], PastorsLine alerts me that "Credits per Month cannot be greater than 5244".
|
This is because the PastorsLine has taken into account the other users in my organization and their credit needs. KEEP IN MIND: Admins do not have a specific credit allotment. They share in the total credit bucket. PastorsLine cannot know how many credits each admin will use.
PastorsLine always makes sure that your plan will cover the total number of credits assigned plus reserve for admins, etc.
Fix:
There are two parts to the user credits that you need to understand first:
Credits per Month (gold box in image above) This is the amount you assign to be added (automatically) to that user’s profile every month. Owner / Admins / Admin+ show as "Shared" because they share in the total credit bucket.
Users show as the number they are allotted. In this case, our user has been given 10 credits per month. | Total Credits (purple box in image above) These are the total credits the user can use. They include any credits you have manually added plus any credits that have rolled over from the previous months. Owner / Admins / Admin+ show as "Shared" because they share in the total credit bucket.
Users show as the number of credits they have to use. In this case, our user has 10 credits. It looks like they have not used any of their monthly allotment. However, they could have had rollover credits which started their number at higher than 10. |
You can increase and decrease these two values for current users to free up credits for your new user.
Step 1: On the User page (example image above), hover at the right-hand end of the user whose credits you wish to edit (decrease in this case) until you see the Action Menu (three vertical dots).
Step 2: Click on Edit Credits. The Edit Credits box will pop up.
Decrease the Credits per Month (brown box in image above) to free up credits and allow you to assign them to another user. Then, using the Total Company Credits, you can increase their Total Credits (turquoise box in image above) to provide a buffer by giving them back the credits you removed.
Section 4: How can I purchase more credits?
We’ve got a choice of ‘credit buckets’ to choose from. They match the per-month plan amount and price. Alternatively, upgrade your plan.
Section 5: Allocate, increase, and decrease (give, add, and remove) credits to user
Owners and admins have access to all your PastorsLine credits. So, you cannot edit their credit allocations.
SECTION 6: FAQ
Q 1: When I delete a user, do their credits go back the owner?
Answer : The credits go back to to your PastorsLine credit 'checking account' instead of the owner. At the end of each billing cycle, what happens to your credits in checking depends on your plan's settings.
Q 2: How can a user have negative credits?
Answer 2: Seems like an impossibility, but it happens every once in a while. For example, the user schedules messages. At that future time, the scheduled messages start to be sent. A few get sent in the following small time gap: after the credits run out but before our PastorsLine flag stops them from being sent. This creates the negative credit balance. Once the flag is up, the user would be locked out from sending any new messages until they are given more credits on a temporary basis or assigned a higher monthly credit amount.