Understand credit expiration
Credits do not sit in the account indefinitely. Each batch carries its own expiry date, and the two sources expire on very different schedules.
The two lifetimes
| Source | Expires |
|---|---|
| Subscription batch | At the end of the billing period, and it is replaced at renewal |
| Top-up batch | Two years after purchase |
Everything else on this page follows from those two rows.
Subscription batches
A subscription batch is dated from the subscription's own schedule:
- an active subscription uses its next payment date;
- a subscription scheduled to end uses that end date;
- when neither is available, the batch expires one month or one year from the grant, matching the billing interval.
At renewal, a fresh batch is granted and the previous one is expired. Unused subscription credits do not accumulate.
This is the single most consequential rule in this chapter. An allowance is a budget for a period, and an unused budget is not carried forward.
The renewal grace window
When a renewal payment has been confirmed but is still settling — a bank transfer that takes days to clear, for example — a short grace window can extend the batch so the service is not interrupted while the money moves.
Two qualifications:
- it is applied only after the renewal order has been verified;
- it is never added to an ordinary batch as routine padding.
The visible effect is an expiry a little later than the payment date. If you see that, it is the grace window and not an error.
Top-up batches
A top-up expires two years after it was created, regardless of what the subscription does in the meantime. Renewals, plan changes and cancellations do not touch it.
Because top-ups are spent only after subscription credits are exhausted, a reserve can sit untouched for a long time. Check its expiry occasionally so it does not lapse unused.
What expiry looks like
An expired batch stops contributing to the balance. There is no warning email from the plugin and no notice in WordPress; the number simply becomes smaller.
The place to see what is about to happen is My Account → POM AI Management, where each batch shows its remaining amount alongside its expiry.
If a balance dropped without matching activity in the usage log, an expiry is the likely explanation. Consumption is logged; expiry is not an operation and produces no log entry.
Which credits are spent first
Batches closest to expiry are used first within their group, and subscription credits are used before top-ups. The spending order is therefore aligned with the expiry order, which minimises waste automatically.
The full rules are in How batches are consumed.
Practical consequences
Schedule large work before a renewal, not after. Work done just before the renewal date uses an allowance that is about to lapse. The same work a day later consumes the fresh batch and wastes the old one.
Do not treat a healthy balance as durable. A balance made up mostly of a subscription batch will reset at the renewal. A balance made up of top-ups will not.
Reversed credits keep their original dates. If an operation is reversed, the credits return to their original batches with their original expiries. A reversal shortly before an expiry does not extend anything.
A cancelled subscription still lets you spend. Its batch expires on the scheduled end date, so credits stay usable until the period you paid for ends.
A short checklist
- Know the expiry date of your current subscription batch.
- Plan bulk operations inside the period rather than across its boundary.
- Check top-up expiries once or twice a year.
- Investigate an unexplained balance drop by comparing the usage log against the batch list — activity appears in the log, expiry does not.