Credits and manual grants
How credits are granted, held, spent and returned, and how to credit someone who paid you directly.
Where credits come from
- A mapped tier: each billing period of a member's subscription grants the mapping's credits, at the start of the period and at every renewal.
- A manual grant: you record credits for a member yourself, for example after an invoice paid outside Ghost.
Every credit belongs to a lot with its own expiry: a period's lot expires when the period ends (unless the mapping carries credits over); a manual grant's lot expires when you say.
How credits move
| Moment | Credits |
|---|---|
| Submit | The package's price is held from the contributor's available credits, oldest lot first |
| Publish | The hold is spent, once, if the post still carries the tag and the byline |
| Reject, withdraw, or a revision deadline passes | The hold is released; credits from a lot that expired meanwhile expire with it |
| Refund (after publication) | Some or all of the spent credits come back as a new lot without expiry |
Nothing is ever edited in place: every movement is a new entry in a double-entry ledger with an audit row, which is what the site's export and the operator's checks read.
Manual grants
For a sponsor who pays you directly, invoiced or otherwise, record a manual grant on the site page:
The person must already be a member of your Ghost site. Add them in Ghost Admin first if they are not, with the tier you mapped (Ghost calls it complimentary when no card is involved).
Choose Grant credits, enter the member's email address, the tier mapping, the number of credits, when they expire, a reason and your invoice or payment reference.
The service credits the member, comps their membership to the mapped tier until the expiry you set, and emails them. The reason and reference stay in the audit trail.
A grant can be taken back with an adjustment that carries a reason; nothing is deleted.
Lapsed memberships
When a member's subscription ends, the service marks them lapsed: existing credits stay until their lots expire, but a lapsed member cannot submit new work until they hold a mapped tier again.