The pay-as-you-go tools let the assistant reach outside BookNovi when a job needs it: search the web, read a page, find businesses of a kind near a place, read a business's reviews or a social account, read what is said in a video on YouTube or TikTok, look a business up, and look up products for sale. Each use is a call, paid from the business's own prepaid wallet in US dollars, and each call is kept as its receipt.
Nobody uses a tool from a screen. The assistant does, as the person it works for, within their login and the business's rules for AI: BookNovi's own assistant, Claude or ChatGPT connected as that person (see Talk to BookNovi from Claude or ChatGPT), or a program with an API key that has the tools' scope.
Switching them on
The tools are off for a new business. An owner switches on Pay-as-you-go tools under Admin, Modules. While they are off, a call is refused before anything is held or asked, and the wallet is not shown.
What each tool uses
For each tool the services behind it are tried in one order: BookNovi's own first (reading a page, thinking it through), then an app the business connected under Admin, Apps (looking a business up with its own Apollo key, for one), then a service BookNovi pays as it goes (Brave for a web search, Apify for maps, reviews, social accounts and videos), and Monid last. A later service is only asked when the ones before it cannot answer, and a service that fails is let go with nothing charged.
Admin, Tools, Pay-as-you-go, Catalog lists each tool, whether it is ready here, and why a service is not. Finding a tool there gives no right to use it.
The wallet
Admin, Billing shows a wallet for each business you run that has the tools on:
- In the wallet: every dollar added, less every charge and anything sent back.
- Held by calls running: before a call runs, what it may cost is held. When it ends it is charged what the service cost (with BookNovi's markup, when there is one), never more than it held, and the rest goes back at once. A call that fails is charged nothing.
- Left to spend: what is in the wallet less what is held. A call that would hold more than this is refused, saying so.
The wallet is in US dollars whatever the business's own currency, and it is prepaid: nothing is billed later, and it never reloads by itself.
Adding money
Choose Add money, say how much, and pay on the card processor's own page; BookNovi never sees the card. The money shows in the wallet as soon as the processor confirms the payment, usually in a moment. The smallest amount to add, and any card fee added on top, are set by BookNovi and shown before you pay ($10.00 and no fee to start).
Money the processor sends back to the card, and money a card's bank takes back in a dispute, comes out of the wallet, never more than is left of that payment; a dispute won puts it back.
Pausing spending
Pause spending is the brake: say why, and nothing new is held or started until someone chooses Start spending again. A call already running finishes. Adding money, pausing and starting again, and changing the rules below take Tool spending, a switch under Settings, Logins that owners and admins have to start.
Money in and out
Under each wallet, its money in and out, newest first: money added, each charge, money sent back, and BookNovi's corrections with their reason. A charge opens its call's receipt.
Receipts
Admin, Tools, Pay-as-you-go shows what the tools did for the open business.
- Usage: every call, newest first. A call's receipt says what was asked and why, who asked, every service considered (passed over and why, or tried and how it ended), what was held and charged, how long it took, and what came back. What came back is from outside BookNovi and is shown as plain text.
- Jobs: the calls the assistant made for one piece of work, such as finding prospects, with a receipt of their own: what each tool found and cost, and the tools' cost in all, such as "Business search: $0.62 … External tool cost: $4.83".
A call whose service takes a while (a map search can take a minute or more) shows as Still running, and its receipt fills in when the service says it is done.
When a call waits for a sign-off
Admin, Tools, Pay-as-you-go, Rules sets when a call needs a person first. Each comes with a starting value:
- One call costs more than $5.00.
- A job goes past $10.00.
- Each time a day's spending passes another $50.00, and each time a month's spending passes another $250.00.
- A burst: more than $10.00 spent, or more than 30 paid calls, within 60 seconds, so a job that runs away stops on its own.
Past any of them the call waits under Settings, Approvals, showing the amount, the tool, what it asks, why, who asked and which threshold it crossed. An owner, or an admin or a manager with Business settings, decides it there; once signed off, the call is made then, and its answer is kept on the approval. A sign-off holds for an hour.
In BookNovi's own assistant, someone who may decide it is asked the sign-off itself, such as "Approve up to $12.00 for find businesses on a map?", and their yes counts as the approval. Anyone else's call waits under Settings, Approvals, and the assistant says so. Through Claude or ChatGPT, even an owner's call waits there, because BookNovi did not hear that yes itself.
Hard limits (none to start) refuse a call past them rather than waiting: the most one call, one job or one day may spend.
What an assistant never does here
An assistant may use the tools and may pull the brake. Whatever the business allows, it never starts a paused wallet again and never changes when spending needs a sign-off; a person does those in the app. The private read-only links under Settings, Connections, AI assistants never use a tool.
A demo business
A demo business has the tools on and a wallet of play money. A sample answers in place of every service BookNovi pays for, so its receipts show what a real one looks like and nothing is paid or sent.
For programs
The API's capabilities area lists the tools, estimates what a request would hold, uses a tool, and reads the calls, a job's receipt and the wallet with its money in and out. Send an Idempotency-Key header with each use, so the same request sent again is never run twice. A refusal comes with its code: 402 not enough in the wallet; 403 tools off, wallet paused or past a limit; 409 the key reused; 422 not right; 429 too fast; 502 a service could not finish, with nothing charged; 503 nothing can do it now. A call past a threshold answers 202 with an approval. The webhook events wallet.deposited and capability.used say how much and how many, never what was asked or found. See Connections, AI assistants and the API.
Best practices
- Add what a month of work needs, not more: a wallet is prepaid and never reloads by itself.
- Keep the sign-off thresholds low until you know what a job costs; the job receipts show it.
- Give Tool spending only to the people who should add money and change the rules.
- If something looks wrong, choose Pause spending first, then read the receipts.