Seats and licences

Every person with access to a workspace occupies one licence. This page explains the accounting, because the two questions it answers — "why was my invitation refused?" and "why is my bill unchanged after removing someone?" — are otherwise genuinely confusing.

This page is about member licences. It deliberately does not quote prices or plan limits, which change; the billing screen is the authority for what your workspace currently has.

Licences, not members

Think of it as two separate numbers:

• Licences — how many people your workspace is entitled to. You change this deliberately on the billing screen.
• Members — how many people currently hold access, including pending invitations.

Members can never exceed licences. Everything below follows from that one rule.

An invitation reserves a licence immediately

The check happens when you create the invitation, not when the person accepts.

This is on purpose. The alternative — checking at accept time — means you send three invitations, and whichever two people happen to click first get in while the third hits a wall you created days earlier. Reserving up front makes the refusal land on the administrator who can act on it.

So a pending invitation occupies a licence exactly as a member does. If you are at your limit, cancelling an unaccepted invitation is a legitimate way to free one.

Why an invitation is refused

On the free plan — the workspace includes a small fixed number of members, enough for you plus a colleague. The next invitation after that is refused and points you at upgrading. This is enough to exercise a full review cycle, including the rule that a submitter cannot approve their own document, which needs two people.

On a paid plan — licences are what you have bought. When your members and pending invitations already fill all of them, you are stopped before the invitation goes out and offered the choice: add a licence now, or free one by removing a member or cancelling a pending invitation. If an invitation is sent anyway without a free licence, it is refused, and the refusal names how many licences are in use and how many are held by invitations nobody has accepted yet.

No invitation raises your bill without telling you first. There is no path where adding a person quietly costs money.

Note what that guarantee is, and is not. It is not that billing only ever changes on the billing screen — if you are out of licences, the invite flow will offer to buy one for you, showing the extra cost and that it is prorated, and confirming it adds the licence from the Members screen and sends the invitation straight after. The guarantee is that a licence is never added except by someone who has read what it costs and clicked to accept it.

Buying licences ahead of time on the billing screen is the calmer version of the same thing, and the better habit if you know you are hiring.

Removing a member frees a licence; releasing it is a separate tick

When you remove someone, their licence returns to your pool and the next person can use it. Whether you keep paying for that licence is a second decision, and you make it in the same moment: the remove dialog offers a tickbox — also release their paid seat.

Left unticked, which is the default, you keep the licence. That is usually what you want when you are backfilling the role. Tick it and the licence is given back as part of the removal, and the billing stops with it.

A removal you did not opt into never changes your subscription. Nothing is released behind your back, and nothing is bought behind your back either.

Two things you can rely on when you do tick it:

• Ending their access always wins. Access is revoked first, and is never delayed or undone by a billing problem. If the payment provider cannot be reached, the person is still removed.
• A release that fails says so. You are told the member is gone but the seat is still billed, and given a retry. If entitlements could not be read at all at that moment, you are told that instead, so you know to check rather than assume. What never happens is the silent version, where a failed release quietly bills you for a year.

You cannot release a seat someone is sitting in

Reducing licences is bounded by the people actually using them. If four members are active you will not be allowed down to three — you are told the count and asked to remove someone first. A subscription never drops below a single licence either.

So reducing can only ever walk your bill down toward the number of people really in the workspace, and never past it into stranding someone who already has access. Adding is deliberately not restricted the same way: a workspace that has ended up with more people than licences can always buy its way straight back.

Reading the numbers

The billing screen shows what you are entitled to and what you are using. Two honesty notes about what you are looking at:

• The payment provider is the authority on what you are being billed. If you reduce licences, the new amount is billed straight away, while the copy of that number inside Alchex catches up moments later. Where the two could disagree, the licence decision uses the provider's number, so you are never handed a licence you have stopped paying for.
• A number Alchex cannot verify is not guessed. If entitlements cannot be read at that moment, the screen says so rather than showing a plausible figure, and actions that depend on it are refused rather than allowed optimistically.

Practical guidance

• Give approval authority to at least two people. With one approver, separation of duties collapses — their own submissions can never be reviewed by anyone else. This is the main reason to have a second licence before you have a second document.
• Audit pending invitations before buying. An invitation someone never accepted is holding a licence.
• Removing someone only saves money if you ask it to. Remember the tickbox: an offboarding done without it leaves a licence you are still paying for, which is fine while you are backfilling and pure waste when you are not.
• Check for empty licences now and then. The billing screen shows bought against filled, so a gap is always visible. A gap is legitimate — it is a licence you are holding open — but it should be one you meant to hold.

Next

• Members and invitations — sending and revoking access.
• Roles and permissions — what a licence actually buys someone.