Admin & Billing Guide

Audience

This guide is for workspace administrators, finance leads, and operations owners.

Admin responsibilities in Kraal

Admins typically own:

• User access and role alignment.
• Client/workspace access boundaries.
• Operational readiness for onboarding and recurring workflows.
• Billing visibility and service continuity.

User management fundamentals

Admins run user management from Team & Roles in the left menu — the roster, invitations, role changes, and each person's access. Every user, admin or not, manages their own details, assistant language, and security status in My Account. For the full breakdown of who can invite teammates, what each role can do, and how client-scoped access works, see Team, Roles & Permissions.

Recommended policies:

• Grant least-privilege access by default.
• Use invitation-based onboarding where possible.
• Remove or disable access promptly for offboarded users.
• Review permissions regularly.

Workspace governance checklist

• [ ] Correct users have correct client access.
• [ ] Sensitive workflows are role-gated.
• [ ] Review/approval expectations are documented.
• [ ] Critical tasks have clear ownership.

How Kraal billing works

Kraal bills your firm per client, with your whole team included at no per-user charge.

• Pricing bands. Each client sits on one of three monthly bands chosen when you create the client: Small Client Books ($99) for low-volume books, Standard ($199) for active books with a full monthly close, and Complex ($399) for multi-entity or high-volume clients. Prices are per client per month. The setup step recommends a band from what you tell Kraal about the client, and you can move a client between bands as their needs change.
• Multi-entity clients. A client with several entities is supported natively inside its band — no separate client record, no duplicated setup. Each client includes up to 4 entities at its band price. Beyond that, additional entities are $75 per entity per month. A Complex client with 6 entities is $399 + 2 × $75 = $549 per month. Dormant and archived clients pay their lifecycle price whatever their entity count — a parked client is not charged for entities.
• Volume pricing. Your first 20 active clients are billed at full band price; every active client beyond 20 is billed at 70% of its band price. The discount is applied automatically; there is nothing to request. Only active clients count — dormant and archived clients are outside the volume math (they pay their own flat lifecycle price and don't use up discount slots).
• 12-month price hold. Pilot customers get a 12-month price hold: the prices in effect when you sign up are locked for 12 months, whatever happens to list prices in the meantime.
• Unlimited team members. Invite everyone who works the books. Seats are free on every plan, on every band.
• Payment method. Your firm adds a card through Stripe's secure hosted checkout, prompted the first time you activate a billable client. Card details are entered only on Stripe's page and never inside Kraal. One monthly subscription covers all your clients, with one line per client, billed on the 1st.
• Who can add spend. Org admins can add billable services directly. Other team members' additions wait in a pending approval queue unless the admin has given them an explicit spending allowance, so nobody can grow the bill unnoticed.
• Failed payments. Stripe retries failed payments automatically. While a payment is unresolved your billing status shows past due; a successful retry clears it on its own. Access is never cut off abruptly: full access continues through a grace period (see Account lifecycle below).
• Cancelling. Removing a client's service stops its charge at the next cycle. Plan changes and cancellations apply at the end of the current billing period.

Client lifecycle

Not every client needs a full close every month. Each client sits in one of three states, and you can change the state from the client's billing settings at any time.

State	Price	Access	Coming back
Active	Band price ($99 / $199 / $399 per month)	Full access — posting, close, automation, reporting	—
Dormant	$25 per client per month	Books stay live, with read access	One click, immediate
Archived	$0	Books are snapshotted and exportable	Needs a restore — hours, not instant

• Dormant suits quarterly filers and seasonal clients. The books stay live, so history, reports, and documents remain readable, and one click puts the client back on its band with nothing to rebuild.
• Archived suits clients you are finished with. Kraal snapshots the books and keeps them exportable, but bringing the client back requires a restore, so plan for hours rather than an instant switch.
• Scheduled reactivation. When you make a client dormant you can set a reactivation date — for example, the week before a quarterly close. Kraal wakes the client on that date and resumes band billing from then, so nobody has to remember to do it.

Practical guidance:

• Use Dormant when you expect to work the books again within the year.
• Use Archived when you do not, and export anything you want to hand over first.
• Moving a client down — Active to Dormant, or Dormant to Archived — applies at the end of the current billing period, so make the change before the cycle turns.
• Reactivation is the exception: access returns immediately (or on the scheduled date), and band billing resumes from that day.

This covers individual clients. For what happens to your whole workspace if billing lapses, see Account lifecycle below.

Account lifecycle

Your books are never held hostage. Whatever your billing state, your data stays yours: viewable, exportable, and intact.

• Early access. Kraal is currently in early access — request access at kraal.ai and we'll set up your workspace. New organizations start with full access while onboarding gets everything connected.
• Active. An active plan or a saved payment method keeps full access.
• Payment issue. If a payment fails, Stripe retries automatically and your billing status shows the issue. Full access continues through a 14-day grace period while it is resolved; a successful retry or an updated card clears it without any further action.
• Cancelled billing. If billing is cancelled, access continues for 7 days so you can wrap up or export.
• Read-only. If a grace period ends without the issue being resolved, the workspace becomes read-only. All of your data remains fully viewable and exportable, and nothing is deleted. Posting and editing resume the moment billing is resolved.

Billing is under Firm Settings → Billing.

AI usage

All AI is included in your plan. There is nothing separate to buy — document processing, transaction categorization, the AI assistant, and automated close work are all part of each client's price. Use AI on everything; that is what it is for.

• Fair use. AI usage is subject to fair use. In practice this only ever matters to extreme outliers: if an organization's usage is far outside normal for a sustained period, Kraal will reach out and talk it through — fair use is a conversation, not a meter, and no charge appears.
• Runaway protection. As a safety backstop, each organization has a high internal usage ceiling that protects against runaway automation — a stuck loop or a misfiring integration, not a busy team. Ordinary heavy use does not reach it. If something does trip it, AI actions pause with a clear message, nothing is lost, and support resolves it quickly.
• Usage visibility. Admins can see AI usage history in the billing area, so you always know how your team is using it.

Transition note. Included AI is rolling out now. If your workspace still shows AI credit balances or top-up settings, those controls remain in effect until the rollout completes — existing balances are honored, and the controls will disappear on their own. Once they are gone, there is nothing to fund or monitor.

Best practices:

• Review billing status on a regular cadence.
• Keep billing contact ownership current.
• Resolve payment failures quickly to avoid service disruption.

Incident readiness (admin perspective)

Prepare your team with:

• A designated admin-on-call.
• A known issue reporting path.
• A standard triage checklist.
• A communication channel for affected users.

Security & trust posture

When evaluating Kraal for your firm or explaining it to clients, these are the controls that matter:

• Role-based access controls — team members and external client-portal users see only what their role permits, scoped to the clients they are assigned.
• Per-client autonomy — each client is on Max or Assisted. Pause stops all new automatic work. See How Kraal earns autonomy and Autonomy & Safety.
• Auditability — every AI and human action that touches the books is recorded and reversible. See Audit Center and Audit Trail & Activity Log.
• Human review where it matters — posted history, money, and contact outside the firm need the rules or a person. See How Kraal earns autonomy.
• Separation of duties on money movement — whoever submitted a payment cannot also approve it. The same is true for locking a period. See Team, Roles & Permissions.

For the full control-by-control description — encryption, access control, auditability, and Kraal's current compliance status — see Security & Compliance.

For a client-facing summary of how Kraal handles their data and books, share the Security & Compliance page along with the autonomy and audit pages above.