Pay for your community
The Billing page shows your community's balance, what it pays for each week, and its history. Top it up from your credit, and turn paid items on or off.
You need permission to see billing (billing.view) to read the page, and to manage billing (billing.manage) to top up, turn items on or off and claim offers.
Your community has a balance in L$. Civitas takes what the community pays for from it each week. The balance earns no interest and can't be cashed out.
Until Civitas starts charging, everything is free, and the page says so. Then the community keeps what's on.
Read the balance
Balance shows:
- Balance: the L$ the community has.
- Each week: what everything that's on costs.
- Next charge: the next Sunday, when the week is charged at midnight SLT.
- Lasts until: the day the balance runs out at this rate. Running low shows when that's less than 2 weeks away, and Paused once it has run out.
History lists every change to the balance, newest first, with who made it. Once Civitas is charging, having it create an SL group for you takes L$10 from the balance too.
Top up the balance
A top-up moves L$ from your own credit into the community's balance.
- In Top up, type the Amount (L$).
- Press Top up and confirm.
It can't be moved back. To get more credit, follow Add credit to your Wallet. See Add credit and buy Core.
Turn items on or off
What the community pays for lists each paid item with its price by the week and by the year:
- Groups, Moderation, Teams, Communications, Forms, Estates and Rentals: the modules. Communications needs Groups, and Rentals needs Groups and Estates.
- Community suite: all six modules together.
- Roleplay suite: makes it a roleplay community.
- Civitas Relay and Hosted bot: your community's own bots. A hosted bot is priced for each bot.
While Civitas is charging, a module that's off is hidden from your community's pages. While the Community suite is on, the modules in it show as included.
To turn one on, turn on its switch in On and confirm. It turns on at once, with anything it needs, and the rest of this week is charged from the balance. After that it's part of each Sunday's charge. The balance has to cover it.
To turn one off, turn off its switch and confirm. It stays on until the end of the week it's paid for, and nothing is refunded. You can turn it back on before then at no cost. Groups can't be turned off while Communications is on.
Pay by the year
Paying by the year gives you 2 months free. Once an item is on, turn on its Yearly switch and confirm. What's charged now counts what's already paid this week, and covers 52 weeks.
When the year ends, it renews for another year if the balance covers it, or goes back to weekly. You're told 2 weeks before it renews. A year is never refunded. Turning Yearly off makes it go back to weekly when its year ends.
When the balance runs out
If the balance doesn't cover Sunday's charge, nothing is charged, and everything paid weekly pauses together:
- Its pages can be read but not changed, and nothing in them runs.
- Nothing is lost.
- Anything paid by the year keeps running, and so does Core.
Top up enough for the rest of the week to resume it all at once.
Civitas warns you ahead of time. Everyone who manages billing gets a notification, and the owner an IM in SL, when the balance lasts under 2 weeks, again under 3 days, and when things pause.
Claim a special offer
Special offers lists offers from Civitas, like free weeks or money off an item. Press Claim, or type an offer's code in Have a code? and press Claim. A discount goes on the community's items. Credit or a Core purchase goes to you. Each offer can be claimed once by each person and each community.
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