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Spending alerts and the spending cap

A spending alert sends an email and stops nothing; the spending cap stops new CI jobs. How to set each, who may, and the day of usage the cap can lag by.

Two controls on the Usage page, and they do different things. A spending alert sends an email and stops nothing. The spending cap stops new CI jobs.

Under Spending alerts on the Usage page, enter an amount for Email me when this month passes and press Set alert. The control appears once the month has some usage on it. Add more with Add another alert at, up to ten. Each sends one email the first time the month's spend passes it, and not again that month. The email goes to the organisation's owners, admins and billing members, and to its billing email address if one is set.

An alert is a notice, not a limit: nothing stops when one fires. To be told somewhere other than email, add A spending alert was passed to a notification channel under Settings → Notifications.

Under Spending cap on the Usage page, enter an amount for Stop new CI jobs when this month reaches and press Set cap. We email at 80% and again at 100% of it. If the month has already reached the cap by the time we would send the 80% email, we send only the 100% one. At the cap:

  • new CI jobs do not start, and the dashboard says New CI jobs are paused at your spending cap;

  • jobs already running are left to finish;

  • Terraform runs are not affected.

The figure the cap is compared with includes your plan's monthly fee, if it has one. A job that is waiting when the cap is reached reads Paused — your organisation has reached its spending cap. Raise or remove the cap in the next few minutes and it starts by itself; if it is still paused about ten minutes on, it is stopped and you re-run it. New jobs start again when the month rolls over, or within a couple of minutes of the cap being raised or removed.

The cap can be passed by up to a day of usage. Spend is brought into billing once a day, so the cap is checked against a figure up to a day old and the month can pass it by up to about a day of usage before new jobs stop. Set it with that day in mind.

An owner, an admin or a billing member can set, change and remove both. Everybody else in the organisation can see them.

How you are billed has when usage reaches billing, and the pricing page has the rates.