Spend controls
Stay in control of your bill: set a monthly message cap, choose what the agent does when it is reached (so it never just goes dark), get usage alerts at 50/80/100%, and never get billed for spam. No surprise charges, no silent auto-upgrades.
View as MarkdownSpend controls put you — not the bill — in charge. The most common complaint about metered chat tools is billing that surprises you: automatic upgrades that are never reversed, a bot that stops mid-month and loses sales, and paying for bot spam. Bookbag is built the opposite way.
Open Usage in the dashboard. The Spend controls card shows this month vs. your cap and lets you change everything below.
Set a monthly message cap
Choose a maximum number of AI messages per month. We never raise it automatically — there is no auto-upgrade and no surprise overage. Leave it unset to simply use your plan's monthly allowance. If you set a cap lower than your plan, the lower number wins.
Decide what happens at the cap
The point of a cap is to control cost — not to lose customers. When you reach it, the agent never just goes dark. You choose its behavior:
| Behavior | What happens |
|---|---|
| Keep capturing leads (default) | The agent keeps collecting visitor details so a busy month never means a lost sale. |
| Hand off to a human | Visitors are routed to your team and a handoff is opened. |
| Show a polite pause | An honest offline note until the next month or a higher cap. |
| Keep answering (overage) | Stay live past the cap — we just alert you. We still never auto-upgrade your plan. |
Usage alerts
Get an email at 50%, 80%, and 100% of your cap — once each per month — so you are never caught off guard. Toggle alerts on or off in the Spend controls card.
Spam is never billed
Abusive bursts and repeated-message floods from a single visitor are rate-limited automatically and do not count against your quota or balance. Your messages are reserved for real customers. Leave the spam guard on (the default).
Spend controls are workspace-wide and apply to every agent and channel. Changing them takes effect immediately.