AI credits: what they are and who buys them
A prepaid balance for the artificial intelligence features, bought once and spent request by request.
AI credits are the school’s prepaid balance for the artificial intelligence features. Nobody is invoiced per answer: you buy a block of credits, the platform draws from that block each time a member uses an AI tool, and the balance falls in the same place as your other money.
The bursar owns the central balance — the school’s pot. Staff, teachers and learners do not spend from it directly; each of them is given an allocation from it, and each carries a ceiling that decides how far they can go. That structure is what lets a school offer AI to its whole teaching team without handing anyone an open account, and it is why the bursar, not the platform, decides what AI costs the institution.
Funding is ordinary mobile money: you choose the number of credits, choose MTN Mobile Money or Orange Money, type the number that will pay, and confirm the request on your phone the way any Cameroonian customer already knows how.
Fund the school’s AI balance in five steps
The whole routine takes two minutes once a month.
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Step 1
Read the central balance
Open Finance > AI Credits. The card at the top of the screen shows the central balance your school still has to spend.
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Step 2
Fund the central key
Click Fund central key, type the number of Credits to buy, choose MTN Mobile Money or Orange Money, then type the MoMo phone number that will pay.
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Step 3
Confirm on your phone
Approve the request on your handset when the operator calls. The credits land on the central balance only after that confirmation.
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Step 4
Allocate to a member
Find the teacher, secretary or learner in the member table and click Manage. Enter Credits to allocate and click Allocate — the amount is added to what they already hold.
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Step 5
Set the ceiling
In the same dialog, enter a Credit ceiling and click Set ceiling. That is the figure the member may never pass, however many credits you give them later.
Buying credits for the school
The funding screen is deliberately short: three answers and one confirmation.
Credits are counted in whole units
The screen asks for a whole number of credits, never a fraction. One credit buys a fixed slice of AI usage, so a round figure such as 100 or 500 keeps the books readable and makes the monthly bill easy to forecast.
The central balance is the school’s pot. Everything the school buys lands on the central balance first, and only allocations leave it. That gives you a single figure to reconcile against your mobile money statements: what you funded, minus what you handed out, equals what is left.
Money arrives before the credits do. Funding is a mobile money transaction, so it is only complete once the request has been confirmed on your phone. Until then the balance is unchanged, and the screen tells you it is waiting for confirmation. This is deliberate: credits that arrived before the money would be a debt your school carries.
Handing credits to a member
Allocation and ceiling are two different controls, and you need both.
Allocation tops the person up
Credits to allocate is the amount you hand over now. It adds to whatever the member already holds, which is how you top up a teacher halfway through a busy month without disturbing anybody else.
The ceiling is the real control
Credit ceiling is the maximum the member is allowed to hold. Set it for a lecturer who needs a research assistant but should not be able to drain the school’s balance in an afternoon, and raise it when they genuinely need more. The ceiling is what makes the allocation auditable: you always know the largest exposure per person.
Revoking stops access at once. When somebody leaves the institution, use the revoke control in the same dialog rather than leaving a balance behind. The member keeps their row and their history, but the AI features stop answering for them immediately, and the balance is withdrawn instead of being quietly spent.
Watching a balance before it runs out
The member table is sorted so that the people about to stop are visible.
Limit, Usage and Remaining are the three figures
Limit is the ceiling you set. Usage is what has already been drawn from it. Remaining is the difference, and it is the number to watch: a member with a Remaining of 2 is one conversation away from a stopped AI feature.
Filter by Role to find your teachers. The table lists every member who can hold credits, tagged with their role. Filter by Role when you are doing a round of allocations, so you review the teaching team in one pass instead of scrolling through students.
Refresh a figure you doubt. If a member’s Usage looks stale, use the refresh control in their dialog to pull the current figure before you decide to top them up. Then re-read the central balance at the top: if it is also low, fund it before allocating again.
When the balance reaches zero, AI features stop answering and the screen tells you plainly that the institution central key is exhausted and needs topping up. Nothing is lost and no account is closed — a single funding step brings the whole school back online.
AI credit questions
Asked by bursars the first time an AI feature stops answering.
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How many credits should I buy for my school?
Start with a round figure that covers a month of ordinary use and watch the Usage column before buying again. A school where a dozen teachers use the AI features a few times a day needs far fewer credits than one expecting every learner to use them all day. Because the ceiling protects you, an over-estimate costs nothing: the central balance simply waits for you.
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What is the difference between allocating credits and setting a ceiling?
Allocating is the gift: you hand a member a number of credits now, added to what they already hold. The ceiling is the rule: the most that member may ever hold. Give a new teacher an allocation and immediately set a ceiling a little above it, and you have controlled exactly how far their AI use can go.
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Can a parent hold AI credits?
No. Credits belong to the people who teach, administer or learn inside the institution — the member table lists exactly those roles. A parent follows their children’s results and fees, but does not consume the school’s AI budget.
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What happens if the central balance reaches zero?
The AI features stop answering and the screen tells you the central key is exhausted. Members who still hold credits keep using theirs until their own Remaining reaches zero; nothing is lost and no history is erased. Fund the central key again and the whole team is back in service.