Credit Management

Imagine you're building an application where users create Projects, and Tasks. In this tutorial I'll show you how you can limit your users usage on important actions, such as creating a project or a task.

Step 1/3) Specify your credits

Open modules/usage/dtos/CreditType.ts and specify the credits name, value, description, and amount.

export type CreditTypeDto = {
  value: string;
  name: string;
  description: string;
  amount: number;
};
export const CreditTypes: CreditTypeDto[] = [
  {
    name: "Project Creation",
    value: "credit-project-creation",
    description: "When you create a new project.",
    amount: 2,
  },
  {
    name: "Task Creation",
    value: "credit-task-creation",
    description: "When you create a new task.",
    amount: 1,
  },
] as const;

export type CreditType = (typeof CreditTypes)[number]["value"];

In this case, creating a projects costs 2 credits and creating a tasks costs 1.

If you create a "credits" feature:

img1

...users will be able to click on credits to get more information at /pricing:

img2

Step 2/3) Track credits usage

Use the CreditsServer.create function to track a specific credit usage:

await CreditsServer.create({
  tenantId,
  userId,
  type: creditType, // "credit-project-creation" or "credit-task-creation"
  objectId: /app/${tenantId}/{createdResourcePath},
});

This will be visible at /app/:tenant/settings/credits:

img3

Step 3/3) Limit usage

The easiest way to keep track of credits usage is by creating a feature in your plans named "credits".

img4

This way you could now use the getPlanFeatureUsage helper function to get the current user usage.

const creditsFeature = await getPlanFeatureUsage(tenantId, "credits");
if (creditsFeature && !creditsFeature.enabled) {
  throw Error(t(creditsFeature.message))
}

So when the user has reached the credits limit, they will be restricted:

img5

Optional) Usage based

If you want to combine usage based billing with credits, create the units at usageBaseUnits.ts:

import { UsageBasedUnitDto } from "../dtos/subscriptions/UsageBasedUnitDto";

export const UNIT_API_CALL: UsageBasedUnitDto = {
name: "api",
title: "API call",
titlePlural: "API calls",
};

export const UNIT_PROJECT_CREDITS: UsageBasedUnitDto = {
name: "project-credits",
title: "Project",
titlePlural: "Projects",
};

export const UNIT_TASK_CREDITS: UsageBasedUnitDto = {
name: "task-credits",
title: "Task",
titlePlural: "Tasks",
};

export const usageBasedUnits = [
UNIT_API_CALL,
UNIT_PROJECT_CREDITS,
UNIT_TASK_CREDITS,
];

This will be visible when creating a pricing plan with pricing model "Usage based":

img6

To report stripe about the usage, use the reportUsage function:

// await CreditsServer.create({ ...
reportUsage(tenantId, UNIT_PROJECT_CREDITS.name);

Finally, check your stripe dashboard and make sure your pricing strategy works as expected:

img7