Credit ledger and transactions
What each row of your credit ledger means, the transaction types and statuses, and where to reconcile a charge.
What this page covers
This page is the reference for how your credit record behaves: what a ledger row represents, what its columns and values mean, and which view to use to reconcile a charge.
It deliberately does not cover:
What things cost — which actions charge, the rate, and pack prices. See Credit costs and pricing.
The steps for reading your usage — see See what consumed credits.
Buying credits — see Top up the credit balance.
What credits mean and what happens when you run short — see How credits work.
Storage usage, which is tracked separately from credits — see Check your storage usage.
Where to find it
Open Usage/Billing from the sidebar. The page shows your credit balance, a Credits Ledger, and two further tabs — Usage History and Purchase History. Each answers a different question, and the difference matters when you are trying to account for a charge.
Credits Ledger
One transaction — a purchase, a grant, an adjustment, or one whole charging action
See how your balance reached its current figure
Usage History
One matter — expand a row to see its documents
Find out which specific documents were charged, and when
Purchase History
One payment attempt, including ones that failed
Check what you paid, how many credits a successful purchase was for, and its recorded expiry
All three tables are paged, and the Credits Ledger holds the fewest rows: it shows five at a time, while Usage History and Purchase History show ten. If you are looking for an older transaction, page through rather than assuming it is missing. The Credits Ledger and Purchase History are ordered newest first and can be re-sorted by Date or Amount. Usage History opens sorted by total usage, largest first — so its top row is the heaviest matter, not the latest activity — and can be re-sorted by either of its columns.
The Credits Ledger
Rows are listed newest first. Before your first transaction the table reads No ledger entries yet.
The ledger has four columns:
Date
When the transaction happened, in your browser's local format
Type
Credit or Debit — see below
Amount
The number of credits, prefixed + for a credit and - for a debit. Debits are shown in red
Status
What produced the row — see below
Transaction types
Credit
Increases — a credit purchase, a welcome grant, or an adjustment made by BriefTech
Debit
Decreases — credits consumed by committing documents, or an adjustment made by BriefTech
Every row is one of these two. An adjustment is not a separate type: it appears as an ordinary Credit or Debit row, and the Status column is what identifies it.
Statuses
The Status column tells you what produced the row:
Paid
A completed credit purchase.
Usage
Credits consumed the first time a document is committed for output — for example an export, a court bundle, Force OCR, or a spreadsheet download. Choosing to produce a watermarked bundle instead does not consume credits, and creates no row.
Admin Adjustment
A correction made by BriefTech, or your welcome-credits grant.
Only successful purchases reach this ledger. A payment that failed or was cancelled is listed in Purchase History with no matching Credits Ledger row.
One debit row is one charging action, not one document
This is the most common source of confusion when reconciling a charge.
When you commit several documents at once — a single export, bundle, or Force OCR run — the ledger records one Debit row for the whole action, carrying the total credits. It does not record a row per document, and the row itself does not identify which documents it covered.
To see which documents were charged, use the Usage History tab instead. It lists one row per matter with that matter's total usage; expand a row to see each document individually, with its date, file name, page count and credit usage. The Matter column shows the matter's internal ID rather than its name.
How the balance is calculated
The balance shown on Usage/Billing — the figure at the top of the page and the one beside the Credits Ledger — is worked out from your ledger each time the page loads: everything added, minus everything used.
The check that decides whether an export can go ahead does not use that figure. It reads a separately saved copy of the matter owner's balance, which BriefTech refreshes after a transaction, and the Insufficient Credits message quotes that saved copy — never showing it below zero. The two are normally the same, but because the saved copy is refreshed separately it can briefly lag — so shortly after a top-up an export can still be refused, quoting a lower balance than the one on your Usage/Billing page. Wait a few moments and try again; if the two figures still disagree, contact support.
Corrections and adjustments
BriefTech support can add or remove credits from an account — a goodwill credit, or a correction to a mistaken charge. These appear as ordinary Credit or Debit rows with the Admin Adjustment status.
An adjustment that has already been made is never edited or removed. If a correction has to be corrected, it appears as a second, opposite row — so your ledger keeps both, and the balance is the two taken together.
There is no refund transaction. Money refunded through your payment provider does not appear in the credit ledger, and does not remove credits already added.
Purchase History
The Purchase History tab lists your payment attempts with six columns: Date, Amount, Credits, Expiry (months), Method and Status.
One row is one payment attempt rather than one completed purchase: an attempt that failed or was cancelled is listed too, carrying the status your payment provider gave it. Only a successful attempt adds credits, so read the Credits figure as what that attempt was for rather than as credits received. Before your first payment the table reads No payments yet. Where a purchase's credit or expiry figure was not recorded, that cell shows -.
Expiry (months) is the validity period recorded against that purchase — see Credit costs and pricing. It is not shown in the Credits Ledger.
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