Project Budgets: Set Ceilings Before You Hit Them

Parlé enforces budgets before spend happens, not after. Rather than reviewing an invoice at month-end and discovering a project ran over, every project can carry spending caps that Parlé checks before a message is sent. Your team works freely up to the cap, and the guardrail kicks in exactly when it needs to, not when the billing cycle closes.

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Two caps, in a currency you choose

A project’s budget is two independent caps, stated in the project’s own budget currency (USD, CAD, EUR or GBP):

• a Monthly cap, which resets at the start of each calendar month, and
• a Lifetime cap, which counts everything the project has ever spent.

You can switch on either, both, or neither, and each has its own amount. Neither implies the other: a monthly cap alone paces spend with no ceiling on the total, and a lifetime cap alone bounds the total with no pacing. Reaching either one blocks new messages.

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The Budget tab

The Budget tab on a project shows what the project has actually spent — computed from real token usage, not an estimate.

• Budget & spend — one card per cap, showing spent of cap used, a progress bar, the percentage used and the amount remaining, all in the budget currency. The header reads Limits in GBP (or whichever currency the project uses). A cap that is switched off reads No monthly cap or No lifetime cap — never a zero — and a project with both off reads No limit — tracking spend only.
• Total spend (EUR) — the project’s whole spend, in its reporting currency, which can differ from the budget currency. The Reporting currency control underneath sets a project override — see Currencies and Exchange Rates.
• Spend by conversation (EUR) — the same spend broken down per conversation, also in the reporting currency.
• Consumption (platform services) — a separate card, shown to Org Admins only, that controls how the project draws on your organization’s credit wallet for Parlé platform services such as OCR and Parlé Managed models. When its Billing mode is Capped allowance, it shows a Cap (USD / month) field. That cap is unrelated to the monthly and lifetime caps above, and it is always in US dollars whatever the project’s budget currency is — so a GBP project shows Limits in GBP at the top of the tab and a US-dollar cap further down, and both are correct. See what stays in US dollars.

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Setting the caps

You can also set one cap when you create the project: the New project form asks for a Budget currency, a Cap period (Every month or Total, for the life of the project) and an amount. Add the other cap afterwards from the Budget tab. See Projects.

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Why the budget currency locks

Once a project has recorded any spend, the Budget currency list is disabled with the note “This project has recorded spend in GBP, so its budget currency can’t be changed.” Re-reading £5,000 as €5,000 would restate a ceiling somebody approved, and converting it would change the number they signed off. If a piece of work needs caps in another currency, set the caps in the current currency or start a new project.

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Projects created before caps had a currency

Nothing about their enforcement changed. A project that had a budget now has a Lifetime cap in USD of the same amount, switched on. A project that had no limit has both caps off.

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How enforcement works

Each cap’s bar turns amber at 80% and red at 100%, and Parlé warns in the conversation from 80% — for example “This project is at 85% of its monthly cap of £5,000.00.” When a project reaches either cap, new messages in it are blocked. The notice names the cap and its currency, and says who can fix it:

“This project’s monthly cap of £5,000.00 has been reached for this month. It resets on the 1st of next month. Only an organization admin can change it — use “Request a higher limit” to ask for one.”

A lifetime cap reads the same way without the monthly reset sentence. The Budget tab shows “This project has reached its monthly cap. New messages are blocked until an organization admin raises it.”

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Requesting a higher limit

Anyone on the project — including a Project Admin — can select Request a higher limit, in the blocked conversation or on the Budget tab, and add a short note explaining why. The request quotes the caps currently in force, in the project’s own currency. An Org Admin answers it from Requests in the sidebar: they choose Which cap to raise (Monthly or Lifetime), enter a New limit (GBP) in the project’s budget currency, and select Approve & apply — or reject it with a reason. An approval only raises a cap that is already switched on; switching a cap on or off is done on the Budget tab. Both the request and its outcome are recorded in the audit log.

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Budget alerts

Budget warning and budget-exhausted notifications, and their emails, state amounts in the project’s budget currency — for example “£85.00 of £100.00 used (85%).” The two caps alert separately: the monthly cap’s alerts re-arm on the 1st of each month, while the lifetime cap’s warning and exhausted alerts each fire once.

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Budget alerts settings

An Org Admin controls when warnings go out on the Budget alerts card, under Org settings → Budgets & alerts:

• Send budget alerts switches every budget alert for the organization on or off.
• Warn at is the percentage of a budget, from 1 to 99, at which the one warning is sent. Reaching 100% always alerts, whatever this is set to.
• Warn when prepaid credit falls below is an amount in US dollars for your credit wallet. Org Admins are told when the balance drops below it, and again if it reaches zero.

Project budget alerts go to that project’s admins and your Org Admins; credit wallet alerts go to Org Admins. There is no recipient list to maintain, because recipients are worked out from roles when an alert fires. Until someone changes them, the card shows the defaults. There is no separate setting for the alert sent when a budget runs out; it goes out whenever Send budget alerts is on.

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Budget layers

Project caps do not operate in isolation. Each of these can independently stop a send: A member with personal-budget headroom and project-cap headroom can still be blocked by the org-wide cap, and vice versa. Because personal budgets and the org-wide cap stay in US dollars, their notices spell out the code — “Personal budget of $100.00 USD for this period would be exceeded.” — so they are not mistaken for your own currency.

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Where spend comes from

Spend is recorded per message in an append-only ledger, attributed to either the project (for project conversations) or the user (for personal conversations) — never both. That is what makes a per-project figure defensible when you take it to a client. Each message’s cost is recorded in the currency your provider quoted it in and converted once, at Parlé’s exchange rate for the month it was sent. A cap that spans several months adds up each month’s spend at that month’s rate, so a later rate change never restates what a project has already spent. See Currencies and Exchange Rates. Two kinds of spend are tracked separately and deliberately never added together:

• Your own provider keys — usage billed to you directly by Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, or whoever holds the account, in the currency of your agreement. See Connecting Providers.
• Parlé-managed models — usage drawn from your prepaid credit wallet, always in US dollars.

A single combined total would mean two different things at once, so Parlé does not present one. The managed figure is an estimate, worked out by applying current settings to past usage; your credit history on the Usage screen is the authoritative record. Usage that Parlé could not put a cost on is never shown as zero: it reads Not priced or Cost unavailable, with a note saying how many tokens the figures exclude. See what the two labels mean.

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Troubleshooting