Ask for more budget

When someone reaches their AI budget, they can ask for more. The request goes to a team owner who can pay for it from their team's overage pool, or to an admin. Approving it raises the person's limit right away.

Who can do this: Anyone with a budget can ask. The owner of the team whose pool pays, or an admin, can answer. No one can answer their own request.

Requests are on unless an admin turns off Let people ask for more in Settings → Budgets. See Set budgets.

Ask for more

1. Open My Usage. Once you reach your budget, a card says "You've reached your $300.00 AI budget this month ($300.00 spent)."
2. Click Request more. If you got a budget-reached message in Slack, its Request more button opens this form.
3. Enter How much more each month (USD), and optionally a Note.
4. Click Send request.

The card then says who has it, for example "You asked for $100.00 more. It's with dana@example.com." To change the amount, click Change request. Sending again replaces your open request.

When it's answered, the card shows the result, such as "dana@example.com approved $100.00 more." or the reason if it was declined. You're also told by Slack or email if people alerts are on.

If you can't ask, the card says why. For example, "You're not on a team, so there is no team pool to ask from. Ask an admin." or "Your organization isn't taking requests for more budget right now."

Where a request goes

Tokenize starts at the person's team and goes up through the teams above it. The request goes to the first team owner whose pool has enough left. A team owner's own request starts at the team above theirs.

If no one up the chain has enough, an admin answers it. Those requests post to your Slack alerts channel. If there's no alerts channel, the person sees "No team lead above you has pool money for this, and your organization has no Slack alerts channel to reach an admin. Ask an admin directly."

Approve or decline

The owner gets the request by Slack direct message and by email, depending on Manager alerts in Settings → Budgets. The message says how much they asked for, what they've spent, their note, and which pool pays.

In Slack, click Approve or Decline. The message then shows who answered.

In Tokenize, go to Budgets and click the inbox button at the top of the page. It shows how many requests are waiting. A team page shows only the requests that team's pool pays for. The Overview page also links to them, for example "2 requests waiting →".

1. Find the request in Requests.
2. Click Approve, or click Decline, add a Reason (optional), and click Decline again.

Approving pays from the owner's pool and raises the person's limit at once. The raise is permanent: it applies this month and every month after, not just until the month ends. For a request that reached an admin, approving raises the top-level team's pool and the person's limit.

Requests made in Claude or ChatGPT

People can also ask for a higher limit inside Claude or ChatGPT. Tokenize shows those requests in the same inbox, marked "Via Claude" or "Via ChatGPT", and sends them to the same person. When you answer one in Tokenize, Tokenize also answers it in Claude or ChatGPT.

Claude requests don't say how much. Tokenize suggests an amount, and you can change it in the inbox before you click Approve. ChatGPT requests name the limit they want, so the amount is fixed.

Some requests can't be answered in Tokenize, for example from someone who isn't on a team or who already has an open request. They're listed under "Answer in Claude" or "Answer in ChatGPT", with no buttons. Answer them in that tool's admin console. A request answered there first shows as "Answered in Claude." on the person's card.