Team Billing & Credits

A Team plan puts everyone on one bill and one shared pool of credits, instead of each person managing their own subscription. This page explains how team billing, seats, pooled credits, and ownership work.

New teams start on Team Free

Every new team starts on Team Free — there’s no charge. Team Free covers the sharing features: team integrations, installable routines, skills, access rules, and @Town for each member in Slack. Members keep running on their own personal plans; a free team grants no credits of its own.

A free team can’t run background routines. Team-owned Background Routines — the shared automations that run on the team itself — need a paid team plan (Team, Team Plus, or Enterprise). On Team Free, the team’s Routines tab explains this and creating a background routine is unavailable. A team Owner or Admin picks a paid plan under the team’s Settings → Plan; ordinary members can’t open that page, so ask an owner or admin. Installable Routines aren’t affected — they install onto each member’s own account and follow that member’s personal plan.

Pooled credits

• The team shares one credit pool. On the Team plan, credits are allocated per seat (e.g. a per-seat allotment × your number of seats) and pooled — anyone on the team draws from the same balance.
• It refills each cycle and doesn’t roll over, just like personal credits. See Credits & Usage.
• Track it under Team → Settings → Plan & billing, where you can see the team’s total usage across members.

Credits: team first, then personal

If a member is on both a paid personal plan and a paid team, work draws down team credits first, then their personal credits — by default. Active team members lean on the shared pool before touching anything they pay for individually, unless they’ve chosen their personal plan to pay first.

Billing follows team membership, not where the work happens. Once you’re on a paid team, everything your Townie does for you draws the same chain of plans — work in the team, personal chats, and routines on your personal email alike. There’s no team-side control that changes this: a team can’t exclude a member from the pool or bill a specific member’s usage to their own plan, and the pool has no per-member limits — the usage view shows who used what, but everyone draws from the same shared balance. The one lever belongs to the member: someone who also pays for their own plan can choose to spend their own credits before the team’s (see below).

By default, credits are consumed in this order:

1. Team plan credits, then any promotional credits on the team.
2. Your own plan credits, then your own promo credits — only if your own plan grants credits (a paid plan, including one still on its free trial; the Free plan grants none).
3. Team overage, if a team Owner or Admin has set the team’s pay-as-you-go spend cap above $0. Note this comes after a paid member’s own included credits: a member with their own paid plan spends those before the team starts paying overage.
4. Your own overage, if you’ve enabled it on your personal plan (see Overage & pay-as-you-go).

When none of those have headroom left, that member is paused until the next refresh or until the team adds headroom.

A plan joins the chain when it grants credits. A Free personal plan grants none, so it isn’t part of the chain — even if it’s holding promotional credits. A paid plan still inside its free trial is part of the chain: its trial credits are spendable like any others. A trial has no pay-as-you-go overage, though, so once its credits are gone the chain moves on without an overage step for it.

One team shape is the exception: a free team (Team Free — the default for new teams) grants no credits, so it never bills members’ usage — its members keep spending their own plans.

If a member has no active plan of their own, a paid team plan covers them — a free team doesn’t.

Choosing which plan pays first

If you’re on a paying team and hold your own paid personal plan, you can choose to spend your personal credits before the team’s:

1. Open your personal Settings → Plan (town.com/settings/plan ).
2. On the Your plan card, click Change which plan pays — the control appears whenever more than one plan could cover your usage.
3. Pick your personal plan.

With your personal plan first, the order above reorders around your own plan:

1. Your own plan credits, then your own promo credits.
2. Team plan credits, then the team’s promo credits (and your other paying teams, in turn).
3. Your own overage, if you’ve enabled it.
4. Team overage, if a team Owner or Admin has enabled it.

A few things to know:

• It only changes who pays, not what you can do. Your access is the same either way — you’re paused only when every plan in the chain is out of headroom, exactly as before. The team still backs you up: once your own credits run out, you’re drawing the team pool again.
• It’s your setting, not the team’s. Each member chooses for themselves on their own plan page — a team Owner or Admin can’t set it for someone else.
• Only a plan that grants credits can go first. A Free personal plan can’t be chosen. A paid plan still on its free trial can — the picker shows the trial’s end date so you know what you’re picking. If your plan later stops qualifying (say it lapses), the choice sits dormant and takes effect again once you’re back on a qualifying plan.
• Picking a team switches you back. Choosing a team in the same control means that team draws first again, replacing the personal-first choice.

Planning around a heavy user

Say a team of six includes one especially heavy member — a founder burning tens of thousands of credits a month — who also keeps their own paid personal plan. By default their usage hits the shared team pool first, just like everyone else’s, so one heavy member can drain the pool ahead of their teammates. Once the pool is empty, that member switches to their own plan’s credits (before the team pays any overage), while teammates without a paid personal plan keep going only if team overage is enabled — otherwise they pause.

The fix is for the heavy member to flip which plan pays first: with their personal plan first, their usage drains their own credits before touching the shared pool, and the team only starts covering them once their own plan runs out. The choice belongs to the member — a team Owner or Admin can’t set it for them — so this is a conversation, not a team setting. If you need a heavy user’s spend kept off the team entirely (including that backstop), the only lever is membership itself: someone who isn’t on the team bills their own plan.

Seats

• Adding a seat takes effect immediately and is charged prorated for the rest of the current cycle.
• Removing a seat doesn’t refund the middle of a cycle — the seat stays usable as a reusable slot until the end of the cycle, so you can assign it to someone else in the meantime.

The “Active seats” count

The Active seats number on the team billing page (shown as, say, “8 of 12”) counts members with usage charged against the plan this billing cycle — it is not a measure of whether seats are enabled. The count comes from usage data that refreshes about once an hour (including today’s activity so far), so it can lag real activity by up to an hour.

Right after an upgrade — which starts a fresh billing cycle — it’s normal for Active seats to read at or near zero even though every seat is billed and fully usable. As members use Town, the count catches up within about an hour.

Starting or upgrading to a Team plan

Here’s the where-to-click path to get a team onto the Team plan:

1. Create the team. Click your avatar in the bottom-left, hover Teams, and choose Create a team, then invite members by email (see Teams). The team starts on Team Free.
2. Open the team’s billing. Go to your team and open Settings → Plan — the team’s billing page, where the Owner or a team Admin chooses the Team plan and sets the number of seats. You can also jump straight there from your personal Settings → Plan using Manage team billing, or from the Pick a paid plan link on the team’s Routines tab.
3. Cancel the individual plans. If members were on their own paid plans, cancel those at renewal so each person keeps the access they’ve already paid for through the end of their cycle. See Cancellation & Refunds.

An existing personal plan isn’t rolled into the team plan — the two are billed separately, and neither the plan nor its credits move across. Keep both if you want to separate personal and team usage, or cancel the personal one at the end of its cycle and run everything on the team.

Because they’re separate, a scheduled change on your personal plan — a queued downgrade or cancellation — doesn’t have to be cleared first: you can start or upgrade a team plan while it’s still pending, and it goes through as scheduled on your personal plan.

Transferring ownership

The Owner and team Admins can manage billing, but top-level ownership belongs to the team Owner. Transferring ownership to another member isn’t a self-serve control today — email support@corp.town.com to hand ownership to someone else (for example if the current owner is leaving), and we’ll make the change.

Handled by our team

A few billing situations for teams aren’t self-serve today and are handled by our support team. Email support@corp.town.com for:

• Merging or consolidating accounts across multiple emails
• Switching a primary account
• Non-profit / student / founder discounts
• Fully offboarding a departed teammate — removing someone from the team is self-serve (see Removing a member), but deleting their personal account and stopping their routine emails / mail forwarding is handled by our team

Related

• Teams — Roles, integrations, routines, and skills
• Credits & Usage — How credits work
• Plans & Pricing — The full plan lineup
• Billing & Usage (admin) — Admin-focused billing guide