> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.useunitpay.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Grants & priority
> What a grant is, the priority convention, and how deductions pick a grant to draw from.
A **grant** is a single deposit of credits into a customer's balance, from one source, with its own priority and (optionally) its own expiry. A customer's balance is the sum of all their open grants — and when usage is deducted, UnitPay has to decide *which grant to draw from first*. That decision is the priority convention.
## What a grant is
Every credit a customer holds arrived as a grant. Grants come from different sources and stack:
* **Plan grant** — the recurring allowance from a plan (the Lovable "1,000 credits/month"), refilled each cycle.
* **Daily drip** — a small plan-level grant that refills every day.
* **Rollover** — unused balance carried over from a prior period.
* **Contract grant** — the committed allocation on an SLG/enterprise contract.
* **Promotional** — a one-off grant you issue by hand (referral reward, goodwill, coupon).
* **Package** — credits the customer bought as a self-serve top-up. See [Top-ups](/documentation/credits/top-ups).
Each grant keeps its own record — its source, amount, remaining balance, and expiry — so you can always see exactly where a balance came from. This shows up as the per-grant `breakdown` behind a customer's balance (see [Wallets & the ledger](/documentation/credits/wallets-and-ledger)).
## The priority convention
When usage is deducted, grants are consumed in **priority order — lowest number first**. Priorities are configurable per `credit_grant_rules`; the defaults encode a sensible convention that differs slightly between PLG (self-serve) and enterprise:
| Priority | Grant type | PLG | Enterprise |
| :------: | -------------------------------- | ------------------ | --------------- |
| 0 | Daily drip (plan-level) | consume first | — |
| 5 | Rollover (from expired contract) | — | consume first |
| 10 | Plan grant / Contract grant | main allocation | committed spend |
| 30 | Promotional | before packages | before packages |
| 50 | Package (self-serve top-up) | preserve as buffer | overflow |
| 100 | Package (post-contract) | — | dead last |
The logic behind the numbers: **burn the things that expire or reset soonest, and preserve what the customer paid cash for.** Daily drips vanish tomorrow, so they go first. Purchased packages don't expire and represent real money, so they sit at the back as a buffer.
## FIFO within a priority
When two or more grants share the same priority, UnitPay breaks the tie **FIFO**:
```
expiresAt ASC → createdAt ASC
```
The grant that expires soonest is drawn down first; if two expire at the same time (or neither expires), the older grant goes first. This guarantees that a customer never loses credits to expiry while newer, longer-lived credits sit unused.
The same principle governs the dollar-side balance deduction order: shorter intervals before longer ones, so expiring allocation is always spent before permanent allocation.
## How the sources stack
A single customer routinely holds several grants at once, and they draw down in convention order:
> **Example (PLG)**
> A customer has a **daily drip** (priority 0, 50 credits, expires tonight), a **monthly plan grant** (priority 10, 1,000 credits), and a **package** they topped up with (priority 50, 500 credits).
> Usage burns the 50 drip credits first, then the 1,000 plan credits, and only touches the purchased 500 once everything cheaper-to-lose is gone — so the credits they paid for are the last to disappear.
> **Example (enterprise)**
> A contract customer has **rollover** from a lapsed contract (priority 5), their **contract grant** (priority 10), and **overflow packages** (priority 50, then 100). Rollover — which would otherwise expire — is consumed before the committed contract spend, and purchased packages absorb the overflow last.
## See also
The full track → resolve → deduct → ledger path.
Where grants and deductions are recorded.
Unit vs. fiat credits — and the rule never to mix them.
Where package credits sit in the deduction order.