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OutSmart Guide

When You're Out of Credits

When you click an AI button and your credit balance is zero, OutSmart shows a panel explaining the situation and offering options. The exact options depend on whether you have an AI Plan or not, and on your billing setup. This page describes the panels you might see and what each option does.

The AI action you were trying to run is not charged to your account when this happens. The click that triggered the zero check uses no credits.

The two main panels

Which panel appears depends on whether you currently have an active AI Plan or an Office Pool you draw from.

”Out of AI credits” (for AI Plan subscribers)

You see this panel when you have an AI Plan or Office Pool but your monthly allotment is fully used and no top-up balance is left.

The panel offers:

OptionWhat it does
Buy 25 creditsOpens the top-up purchase flow inside this same panel. See Top-Up Credits. Adds credits to your balance immediately and re-runs the action you were trying to do.
Upgrade planOpens the Subscriptions page → AI Plans tab so you can move to a larger plan.
Not nowCloses the panel without changing anything. The AI action does not proceed; you can still use OutSmart normally.

The most common path here is Buy 25 credits. You stay on the same page, fill in (or confirm) your card details inside the panel, and the AI action re-runs as soon as the purchase succeeds.

”Starter credits used up” (for practitioners with no AI Plan yet)

You see this panel when you’ve used your starter credits and you don’t have an AI Plan or Office Pool to fall back on. Top-up credits aren’t offered here because they’re sized to supplement a monthly plan. Without a plan to top up, the path is to subscribe.

The panel offers:

OptionWhat it does
View AI PlansOpens the Subscriptions page → AI Plans tab so you can pick a plan and subscribe.
Not nowCloses the panel without subscribing. The AI action does not proceed.

Paying for a top-up without leaving the page

When you click Buy 25 credits on the Out of AI credits panel:

  • If you have a card already saved on file, the purchase runs immediately. No second step. A success message appears, the credits land in your balance, and the AI action you originally clicked kicks off automatically.
  • If you don’t have a card saved, the panel swaps to show a small card form (card number, expiry, CVC, name on card, postal code). Fill in the card details and click Pay. OutSmart charges the card, saves it for future use, and adds the credits to your balance. The AI action kicks off as soon as the purchase completes.

Throughout the flow you stay in the same panel on the same page. You don’t get bounced out of the chart or referral you were working in.

If your card requires an extra security check from your bank (a code sent by SMS, a banking-app prompt), that step appears inline as part of the same flow. Once you’ve completed it, the purchase continues.

If the card is declined or something else goes wrong, the panel shows the reason inline and lets you adjust the card and try again without closing.

A special case: practitioners on a legacy billing system

A small number of practitioners are still on OutSmart’s older legacy billing system from before the move to the current payment processor. AI features can’t be added to a legacy subscription directly, not because the AI features themselves are different, but because we don’t want any practitioner to end up with two separate monthly bills.

If you’re on the legacy billing system and you try to use AI features past your starter allotment, the Migrate your subscription first panel appears instead of the standard subscribe panel. The migration is handled by our support team:

  • Click Contact OutSmart Support on the panel. The Ask OutSmart widget opens with a pre-filled request to migrate your subscription.
  • Our team handles the migration on our end. You do not have to set up a new account, and your patient data, chart history, settings, and saved cards are not affected.
  • Once the migration completes, you can subscribe to an AI Plan from the AI Plans tab as normal.

A renewal that has failed past the grace period

If your AI Plan’s renewal payment failed and OutSmart’s retries did not succeed by the end of the grace period, your next AI click shows the Subscription couldn’t be renewed panel.

The panel offers:

OptionWhat it does
Update payment methodOpens the Subscriptions page so you can replace the card on file.
Not nowCloses the panel. AI features stay unavailable until the payment method is updated and the renewal goes through.

You will also have received emails from our payment processor about the failed charge during the retry window. Updating the card before the grace period ends usually avoids the AI-features-stopped scenario entirely.

What still works when you’re out of credits

Out of credits means out of paid AI features, not out of OutSmart. The following still work normally:

  • Every non-AI part of OutSmart: calendar, charts, dispensary, referrals (with the AI panel ignored), Smart Forms, Reports, Document management, billing, the patient portal.
  • Ask OutSmart, the in-app help assistant. It does not use AI credits.
  • Existing AI work already saved. A lab analysis you did last week is still there, the interpretation is still there, and the imported measurements are still in the chart. Past AI work doesn’t disappear when your balance hits zero.
  • Re-opening a previously analyzed lab document. The cached analysis comes back for free.

What stops is new paid AI actions: analyzing a new lab document, generating a new clinical interpretation, drafting a new Patient Correspondence letter.

What happens if you click Not now and want to try again later

You can re-open the AI feature any time. Clicking the AI button again brings the same panel back. Your balance is still zero, so the choices are the same.

If your balance is no longer zero by the time you try again (for example, you waited for your monthly renewal date, or you bought a top-up from the Subscriptions page directly), the AI action runs normally.