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The Big Picture

Assistable separates your platform subscription, usage charges, and any client usage you rebill. This guide explains how those charges appear in your wallets and transaction history.
  • Your subscription pays for the platform plan. Check the agency plan page for current self-serve terms; a custom deployment quote can have different commitments.
  • Your wallet funds usage. Calls, chat replies, and other billable activities create usage charges.
  • Transaction history shows the charge breakdown for reviewing and reconciling usage.
  • Autopay, when configured, attempts to refill a low wallet from the payment method you provide. Monitor the balance and any failed payments.
There are two kinds of wallets, because there are two kinds of customers: If you don’t have clients (you just use Assistable yourself), you only care about the workspace wallet. If you’re an agency reselling AI to clients, both matter.
Use the current rate sheet and your agreement for applicable prices. The examples below illustrate usage accounting; they are not an all-in subscription quote. Model, voice, telephony, optional features, and billing rounding affect the final charge.

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What Assistable Charges You

These come out of your workspace wallet.

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AI Voice Calls: billed per minute, to the second

Voice usage is calculated from call duration rather than rounding each call up to a full minute. For example, 52 seconds is approximately 0.8667 minutes. Final wallet charges are rounded according to the applicable billing rules; the public rate sheet specifies per-call wallet rounding to the nearest cent. Each minute has a few ingredients: Example: a 2-minute call with a model that costs $0.02/min:
Example: a 5-second hang-up, before final wallet rounding
Voice calls always use Assistable’s AI keys. (Bring-your-own-key only applies to chat. See below.)

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AI Chat Messages: billed per reply

Every time your assistant sends a reply in a chat (SMS, Instagram, web chat, etc.), that’s one billable message.
  • Price: $0.02 per AI reply.
  • Messages from your customers are free. You only pay when the AI talks.
  • Bring your own key (BYOK): if you connect your own OpenAI / Anthropic / Google key, replies generated by that provider’s models are free, because you’re paying the AI company directly instead. The key only covers its own provider: an OpenAI key does not cover a Claude or Gemini assistant. Those still bill $0.02 because they run on our keys.
Example: Your assistant has 500 conversations this month and sends 1,200 replies.
  • Without your own key: 1,200 × $0.02 = $24.00
  • With your own OpenAI key (and GPT-model assistants): $0.00 from us (OpenAI bills you directly)

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Knowledge Base: billed per lookup

Your knowledge base is like a textbook your assistant can flip open mid-conversation. You pay only when it actually opens the book:
  • Price: $0.01 per query (per lookup, not per minute, not per month).
  • A call where the assistant never needed the KB = $0 for KB.
  • A call where the caller asked 3 hard questions and the assistant looked up 3 answers = $0.03.
Example: a 1-minute call with 2 KB lookups

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Observation / QA: billed per observer, per conversation

Observers are like quality-control inspectors. You write rules (“flag calls where the customer sounds angry”, “check the assistant offered the discount”) and after every call or chat, each rule reads the transcript and grades it.
  • Price: $0.02 per observer per call/conversation. Each rule = one observer = one AI evaluation.
  • 1 rule on a call = $0.02. 6 rules on a call = $0.12. No rules = $0.
Example: You have 4 monitor rules and your assistant handles 100 calls today: 4 observers × 100 calls × $0.02 = $8.00

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Phone Numbers: billed monthly

Eligible platform-owned phone numbers have a recurring rental charge, separate from call usage. Imported/BYO numbers remain subject to their own carrier’s rental charges.
  • Eligible platform-owned number price: $2.50 per number per month.

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Rebilling: How Agencies Charge Their Clients

If you’re an agency, each client sub-account has its own wallet. With rebilling enabled, eligible usage is deducted from that wallet at your configured prices. Your agency wallet separately pays Assistable’s usage costs. The difference is gross contribution before your subscription, payment-processing fees, support, and other operating costs.

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Usage rebilling versus a client subscription

Your Assistable agency subscription is separate from the prices you charge your clients. Native client rebilling uses usage rates and wallet balances; it is not a monthly client-plan builder with included-minute allowances and automatic overage invoicing. An optional monthly wallet allowance transfers agency-funded credit to a client wallet. It is separate from a subscription payment or included-minute counter. If your service includes a monthly retainer, setup fee, or bundled minutes, confirm how those charges and entitlements are administered. When migrating from another platform, reconcile existing subscriptions, credits, and billing dates rather than assuming they transfer automatically.

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Turning it on

Rebilling has two switches, and both must be on:
  1. Master switch: “rebill this sub-account: yes/no”
  2. Category switches: one each for Voice minutes, Chat messages, Knowledge base, Observation, Phone numbers
Common gotcha: master switch on but every category off = nothing gets rebilled.

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Setting your price: two ways

For each category you pick one of: Option A: Fixed price. “I charge $0.30 per minute. Period.” Simple and predictable. You set the exact rate your client pays. Option B: Percentage markup. “Whatever it costs me, charge my client that plus 40%.” The client charge follows the applicable usage cost. A 40% markup means client charge = cost × 1.40. It does not mean a 40% gross margin: a $0.10 cost becomes a $0.14 charge, leaving $0.04, or approximately 28.6% gross margin before other costs. Gross margin is (client charge − cost) ÷ client charge. Markup is (client charge − cost) ÷ cost. Use the correct denominator when planning agency economics.

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Worked examples

Voice, fixed price. You set $0.30/min. Client gets a 2-minute call:
  • Your cost (from Part 1): ~$0.21
  • Client pays: $0.30 × 2 = $0.60
  • Gross contribution: $0.39 on that call, before other costs
Voice, 50% markup. For an illustrative call costing you $0.25 before final rounding:
  • Client pays: $0.25 × 1.5 = $0.375
  • Gross contribution: $0.125 before other costs. This is 50% of cost and approximately 33.3% of client revenue, before billing rounding
Chat, fixed price. You set $0.04/message. Client’s assistant sends 1,000 replies:
  • Your cost: 1,000 × $0.02 = $20
  • Client pays: 1,000 × $0.04 = $40
  • Gross contribution: $20 before other costs
Observation, 50% markup. A chat gets graded by 1 observer:
  • Your cost: $0.02
  • Client pays: $0.02 + 50% = $0.03
Phone number example. At a $2.50/month cost and a $4.00/month client price, gross contribution is $1.50/month per number, before other costs. The client price is illustrative, not a recommended or typical market rate. Knowledge base: special case (current behavior). KB rebilling works in two modes only:
  • Percentage markup, e.g. 50% markup: a lookup costs you $0.01, your client pays $0.015.
  • No markup configured: your client simply pays our cost ($0.01 per lookup). You break even; they’re never overcharged.
Why no fixed $ rate for KB right now? The old setting was “price per knowledge base” (a flat monthly idea), but KB is now billed per lookup (completely different units). To make sure nobody’s client gets charged an old monthly-style price per question, custom flat KB rates are paused until everyone’s settings are migrated. Percentage markup is the safe, recommended way to profit on KB.

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What your client sees

Every rebilled charge shows up in the sub-account’s transaction history with the same line-by-line receipt format, at your prices, not ours. Your client never sees Assistable’s cost; you keep your margin private.

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Three honest rules of rebilling

  1. You can price below cost. Want to charge your client $0.01/min as a loss-leader? Allowed: it’s your revenue, your call.
  2. $0 means absorb. Setting a price to zero means “don’t charge my client for this. I’ll eat the cost.”
  3. Client wallets can go negative. If a client’s wallet hits $0 mid-call, the call doesn’t drop. Autopay, if configured, attempts to refill the wallet; a failed payment can leave the balance negative.

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Reading Your Receipt

Every charge creates a transaction you can open. This illustrative breakdown shows the component arithmetic before final wallet rounding:
And the matching observation receipt for the same call (if you had 3 rules):

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Quick-Reference Price Card

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FAQ

No. No connection, no charge. (Calls that connect but get hung up within 10 seconds bill a few cents. See short-call surcharge.)
No. Only AI replies count.
Check the assistant’s model. Your OpenAI key only covers GPT models. Assistants running Claude, Gemini, or Kimi use our keys and bill normally. Switch those assistants to a GPT model or add keys for those providers too.
The workspace wallet funds Assistable usage charges. The sub-account wallet funds client usage at your configured prices. One activity can create entries in both ledgers: your cost in the workspace ledger and the client charge in their ledger. Funding one wallet does not fund the other.
Yes, anytime. New prices apply to new activity from that moment on.
Open the transaction: the line items show exactly what was billed and why. Still looks off? Contact support with the transaction ID and we’ll trace it.