Prepaid balances
In January you put 1,000 into the advertising platform and spent it between January and April.
If you record a 1,000 expense in January, your January is wrecked and your February, March and April look free. None of the four months tells the truth, and if you try to work out how much it costs you to win a customer, whatever number you get will be garbage.
The problem isn't yours or your accountant's. It's that paying and consuming are two different events, and most apps only know how to record one.
What a prepaid balance is
A prepaid balance is value you already paid for that sits in someone else's hands, waiting for you to use it. It's a mechanism, not a line item, and once you see it, it shows up everywhere:
- The balance on your advertising platform
- The credits on an AI tool
- A fuel or transit card
- An annual policy paid in advance
- Rent you paid ahead of time
In all of them, the money left your account today and the value is consumed later. The balance separates those two moments and lets each one land in the month it belongs to.
Topping up isn't spending
When you put money into a balance, that's a top-up (Add funds): money leaves your account or your card, today.
But it isn't an expense. Your result doesn't change by a single cent. What happened is that you turned one form of value (cash) into another (a prepaid balance in your favor). You still have the same, only now part of it is in your provider's hands. On your Balance sheet it shows up as an asset, because that's exactly what it is.
You can top up from an account in one currency and have the balance in another: you pay in your local currency, the balance stays in the provider's.
Using it is spending
Register usage is where the real expense is born. The screen's help text says it in full:
"This is the real expense: it counts on the day you use the value, not the day you paid."
And here something happens that looks odd and is exactly right: usage doesn't move cash. It can't — the money already moved when you topped up. If usage touched your bank account again, you'd have paid twice.
Value is drawn down in order of arrival: what you topped up first is used first.
Automatic usage
Some things aren't used up in irregular chunks but evenly: an annual policy, prepaid rent, a twelve-month license.
For that, when you top up you turn on Spread over a period and give the dates: "The expense counts month by month while it is used, like an annual policy or prepaid rent."
Clatri spreads the usage month by month, on its own. That's why "I paid the year's insurance" isn't one giant expense today: it's a top-up with a period, and twelve honest expenses.
Bonus credits: what you were given
Your provider gives you a coupon for 500 in credit. You didn't pay anything, but you have value.
That's a bonus credit: "Free value, like a coupon or promo credit. When used, reports show the real cost and who covered it."
When you use that value, the reports do something uncommon and very useful: they show you the real cost of the activity and, at the same time, that a gift covered that cost. In other words, they let you see two margins at once:
- Your actual margin — this month's, with the coupon applied
- Your sustainable margin — the one you'll have when the coupon runs out
Many businesses find out too late that their profitability came from a platform's promotional credit. This is the mechanism for not being one of them.
Adjusting: when value is lost
Sometimes the value goes away without you using it. And here Clatri distinguishes two cases that have nothing in common:
| What happened | How it's recorded |
|---|---|
| You lost paid balance — your account was suspended, a credit you bought expired | It's a loss in your results. It's not that you used the service: you lost money. |
| A bonus expired — the coupon you were given ran out | It's not an expense. It never cost you anything. The balance simply shrinks. |
Mixing them up would mean recording as a loss something that was never yours.
Where the expense lands
When you create a balance, you tell it which accounting account its usage should land in —Advertising, for example—. With that, Clatri stores a rule tied to the balance and each usage is classified on its own, from then on, with a trail of why.
That expense can be split across several of your businesses, while the balance still belongs to the entity.
A prepaid balance isn't savings
People confuse them, and they're opposites:
| Savings pocket | Prepaid balance | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the money is | In your account, it's yours | In your provider's hands |
| What you can do | Take it out whenever you want | Only use it on that service |
| When you use it | It's not an expense: you move it | It is the expense, that's where it's born |
The report
Balances by month shows you, month by month and balance by balance, "what you consumed (-) and recharged (+)".
It's the snapshot that makes everything above visible: in the month of the top-up you see the outlay, and in the following months you see the usage. Two different stories, each in its place.
Against double counting
If you try to record a top-up that looks too much like one that already exists, Clatri stops you: Possible duplicate recharge, because "recording it again would count the cash twice".
It's the same obsession as always: money that already moved doesn't move twice.
By chat
"I topped up 300 on the ads platform from the main account", "I spent 120 of ad credit yesterday", "they gave me a 50 bonus", "I paid the year's policy, 1,200, spread it through December".