# Credits
In order to convert a pdf you need a balance of credits. We charge 1 credit per successfully converted pdf. There are 2 ways in which you can purchase credits and this depends on your pricing plan:
# Pre-paid
You must manually purchase credits in advance using the online credit purchaser before you can begin converting pdfs. Each pdf that you convert deducts a credit from your credit balance. Once your balance reaches zero all requests will fail until you purchase more.
# Subscriptions
You start each month with a base allotment of credits. As you convert pdfs credits are deducted from your base until you reach zero. At that point you can manually purchase more credits (overage credits). Alternatively you can change your account settings to simply allow the overage credits to rack up and get added on to next months bill.
See the pricing plan for more details.
# How to buy credits
You can buy credits on the app as follows:
- Login (opens new window) to Spike
- Go to the buy-credits (opens new window) screen
Pro-tip: clicking on your credits icon in the top navigation bar will also take you to the buy-credits (opens new window) screen.
Notes:
- You need a credit card in order to purchase credits[1].
- You can purchase any quantity of credits, the unit price is fixed by your pricing plan.
- Credits are added to your account immediately
- Credits are not refundable
Overageandpay-as-you-gocredits do not expire (base allotmentcredits are for 1 month only - see pricing)- You can buy more credits at any time - you do not need to wait for your remaining balance to reach zero. Any new credits are simply added to your remaining credit balance.
# Check your remaining credit balance
Once you have logged in you will see your remaining credit balance in the top navigation bar on the app e.g. 
A negative number (which can only occur if you're on a subscription plan) indicates that you have exceed your monthly base allotment and shows how many overage credits you have used in the current month. The overage credits will be charged to your account in next months bill.
# Per unit cost
Our pricing table (opens new window) lists the current per-unit costs and this varies per pricing plan. Higher volume plans benefit from decreased per-unit costs.
# Usage
You can see how your credits have been deducted by looking at the usage table (opens new window). This lists all historic requests that you have made to date. It also shows your credit purchases (in green) e.g.
# Refund policy
Our policy is that credits are not refundable. This includes all credit types: pay-as-you-go, overage, and base allotment credits; as well as any credits pre-purchased on an annual or semi-annual discounted special.
At our sole discretion we may allow refunds in exceptional cases for example where credits have clearly been purchased in error and we are notified immediately.
we use payfast (opens new window) as our payment gateway ↩︎