AI budgets, usage and permissions

Every question to a paid AI provider costs money. MotoDealerHQ protects you in two ways: a hard monthly budget that is checked before anything is sent, and permissions that decide who can ask and what the assistant may show them.

How the monthly budget works #

You set the Monthly budget (USD) in Settings › AI assistant (see Provider setup). Your plan sets the highest budget you can choose. If the plan's limit is later lowered, the lower figure applies.

1. A question can take several steps: the model may ask for a lookup, read the result and ask for another. Each step is one call to the provider.
2. Before every call, MotoDealerHQ estimates the cost on the high side and checks: spent this month + questions already in progress + this estimate must fit inside your budget.
3. If it does not fit, the call is not sent. The question ends with "This dealership's monthly AI budget would be exceeded, so the request was stopped before anything was sent."
4. After a call, the provider's reported usage is recorded and the estimate released. If the provider does not report usage, or the connection drops after the request was sent, the estimate is booked instead (never $0).
5. On the first day of the next month the budget starts again.

Costs are worked out from the token prices MotoDealerHQ enters for the model. A budget of $0 means no paid questions at all.

Check your usage #

1. Open Reports & AI › Assistant and select Usage.
2. The top of the page shows Budget this month, Spent, and Remaining (including the amount held for questions in progress).
3. Scroll down for:
   • By month: questions, input and output tokens and cost per month.
   • By person this month: who asked how many questions and what they cost.
   • By feature and model this month: the provider and model used.
   • Security events (30 days): blocked lookups, instruction-like text found in records, and budget stops. Details are in the audit log.

Usage totals contain no question or answer text, and they are kept even after conversations are deleted.

Rate limits #

To stop runaway spending, questions are also limited by count. With the default settings:

When a limit is reached, the page asks you to wait a little and try again.

Permissions #

The assistant uses five permissions. Set them in Settings › Roles.

The Read Only role never gets ai.view, because every question spends budget. Dealerships created before the assistant existed had these permissions added to the owner role only; add them to other roles yourself.

On top of these, each lookup needs the normal permission for its data, such as inventory.view for stock or service.reports.view for service numbers. The assistant is never offered a lookup you could not run yourself, and it only sees your own rooftops.

Customer details need two switches #

Customer names, emails and phone numbers appear in answers only when both are true:

1. The dealership has ticked Let the assistant see customer names, emails and phone numbers in Settings › AI assistant.
2. The person asking has ai.view_customer_details.

Social Security numbers, card and bank details, credit applications, passwords and keys are never sent, whatever these settings say.

Tips #

• Give ai.view only to people who need it. Every question they ask is paid from the same budget.
• Review By person this month now and then to see who gets value from the assistant.
• If a question fails with a budget message early in the month, look at Remaining: several long questions running at once can hold budget until they finish.

Limitations #