Credits and billing
The cost of doing things twice
Almost all avoidable consumption comes not from heavy use but from repetition.
When a company wants to spend less, the first idea is usually to use the platform less. That is almost always the wrong answer: avoidable consumption is not in what you do once, it is in what you end up doing two or three times.
The four usual repetitions
| Repetition | Why it happens | What prevents it |
|---|---|---|
| Resending something that did go out | Nobody checks the status before repeating | Check whether it shows delivered or opened |
| Uploading the same document twice | It arrives by two routes: email and link | Have the third party supply by their link and nobody else upload it |
| Asking again for what was already supplied | The request stays open although the document is there | Close the request on receipt |
| Redoing a badly targeted campaign | It was launched against an old list | Review the list beforehand, not after |
Important
The first is by far the commonest and the only one solved by changing nothing: **before resending, check the status**. A send showing delivered and opened does not need repeating, and the resend counts as a new action just like the first. Most of the time the problem was not that it never arrived, but that it arrived to the wrong person.
What counts and what does not, so you do not optimise blindly
Read that last one with the usual criterion: **the source of truth is your breakdown**, not a price list. What does not appear there was not charged to you.
Watch out
Beware the optimisation that costs money: stopping reminders to save credits. A reminder costs one action; a supplier delivering two weeks late can cost you a stopped site. The saving is in not repeating what already worked, not in giving up on chasing whoever has not replied.
How to spot where you are repeating
- 1
Look at the breakdown by action type
If sends far exceed open requests, there are surplus resends.
- 2
And by recipient
Three sends to the same contact in a week are almost always the same matter.
- 3
Ask whoever sends them
They usually know exactly why they resend: normally they do not trust the status.
Worth knowing
If the team resends because they do not trust what the send status says, that is the problem to fix — not the consumption. Showing once how to read the status saves more than any savings policy.
›Is sending to several at once cheaper?
Yes: a send to two hundred counts as one, not two hundred.
›What if a document arrives corrupted and must be re-uploaded?
That is a genuine new upload; hence asking for a usable original.
›Does deleting duplicates save anything?
Nothing retroactive: what was consumed is already counted. It helps clarity, not spend.
A real case
The situation
A company sees high consumption and decides to send fewer reminders.
What you do
- Checks the breakdown and finds the excess was resends of the same send
- Shows the team how to check status before repeating
What you get
Consumption falls and chasing keeps working, which is what they actually needed.
The situation
A process is relaunched because nobody knows whether it went out.
What you do
- Checks the status before repeating
What you get
You stop paying twice for the same thing.
The situation
Two people request the same thing from the same supplier.
What you do
- They work on the same file
What you get
The supplier receives one request, not two.
The situation
A document that was already processed is read again.
What you do
- Checks whether it already has extracted data
What you get
The process is not repeated without reason.
The situation
A document is sent for signature twice just in case.
What you do
- Checks the signature status
What you get
The signer does not receive the same document twice.
The situation
A campaign is redone because there is no record it was sent.
What you do
- Checks the send history
What you get
The cost of doubt disappears.
This article answers
- reduce credit consumption
- why do we spend more than expected
- avoiding duplicate sends
- uploading the same document twice