vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
IBM Cloud Billing and Usage docs 

IBM Cloud offers multiple billing options and tools for every business whether it’s tracking your usage or managing invoice and payments. Leverage the docs, API & SDK reference, architecture references, and more to support your billing and usage needs.

 Developer tools 

[API & SDK reference](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs?tab=api-docs&category=platform_services&subCategory=billing-usage)[CLI reference](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/cli?topic=cli-ibmcloud_billing)

 Recommended content 

[Best practices for billing and usage Follow our best practices to track costs, automate billing, and explore billing options in IBM Cloud.](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/billing-usage?topic=billing-usage-best-practices)[Viewing your usage You can view your IBM Cloud usage details, including a summary of estimated charges for all services and resources that are used per month in your organizations, from the Usage page in the console](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/billing-usage?topic=billing-usage-viewingusage)[Managing payments Depending on your account type, we offer multiple ways to best manage your payment methods. ](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/billing-usage?topic=billing-usage-linkedusage)

 Video library 

[![carousel thumbnail](https://cloud.ibm.com/media/docs/images/homepage/default_video_thumbnail.png)<br><br>How can I manage billing and usage in IBM Cloud?](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/billing-usage?topic=billing-usage-overview)[![carousel thumbnail](https://cloud.ibm.com/media/docs/images/homepage/default_video_thumbnail.png)<br><br>IBM Cloud's latest unification project](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAdwp4npjvc)

 Learn more
For example, log in to the [IBM Cloud Direct Link console](https://cloud.ibm.com/interconnectivity/direct-link) and click Order Direct Link. Then, choose to order Direct Link Connect or Direct Link Dedicated. As you complete the ordering form, cost estimates appear in the Summary side panel.





 In terms of cost, what do I pay for? 

There are two pricing plans: metered and unmetered. Metered has a port fee and bill per GB egressed across the Direct Link. Unmetered billing has a higher port fee and no usage charges, which are ideal for customers who consistently egress traffic across their direct link.





 Can I change billing options after my direct link is provisioned? 

Yes, you can change billing options after a direct link is provisioned, regardless of whether you chose global or local routing. For example, to change from metered to unmetered billing, navigate to the Details page of the direct link and click Edit. In the side panel, select Unmetered in the Billing section, review the updated information, then agree to the prerequisites and click Submit.





 When does billing begin with Direct Link? 

The fees for Direct Link cover the cost of service termination on the IBM Cloud infrastructure.

Infrastructure services are billed in advance and begin upon acceptance of a client’s order. However, due to the nature of IBM Cloud Direct Link, the Direct Link service billing begins when a BGP session is established with IBM Cloud, or 30 days after the order is submitted.

Billing stops after (1) you request a circuit to be deleted, and (2) the provider has de-provisioned the circuit.





 What extra charges will I incur from other parties with Direct Link? 

You might have extra charges from your provider. See to your carrier or service provider for their fee information.







 What is planned for Direct Link on Classic Exchange? 

The marketplace has evolved since Direct Link Exchange was established. With data center operators now blurring the lines as network service providers, IBM will be combining the Exchange offering with Connect on the new "next generation" platform to reflect both this change and simplify the Direct Link portfolio. Direct Link Exchange will service only the Direct Link classic infrastructure.
Enter your estimated usage, and click Calculate Cost. You can adjust the estimated usage and recalculate the cost to see how different usage levels affect the overall cost.



By default, the estimator shows the pricing and billing currency set for your account. Pricing can vary by region. If you're estimating costs for a different location or currency, you might have to select the appropriate currency on the order summary page for the product or change the currency on your account.



1. Click Save and select the estimate that you'd like to add the product to, and then add the calculated cost to your estimate by clicking Save.
2. When you're done adding products to your estimate, review the product details, and click View estimate.







 Updating an existing estimate 

You can always update the name and description of an estimate as your needs change. To edit an estimate, complete the following steps:



1. From the View Estimate page, identify the estimate that you want to edit.
2. Click the Actions icon ![Actions icon](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/9713d864488177dc6b273b53b7f2383a81f10bc1/icons/action-menu-icon.svg) > Edit.
3. Enter the updated name and description.
4. Click Save







 Saving and sharing your estimate 

When you create an estimate, you can save each estimate's unique link to share or revisit directly through your browser. To share an estimate, complete the following steps:



1. From the View Estimate page, identify the estimate that you want to share.
2. Click the Actions icon ![Actions icon](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/9713d864488177dc6b273b53b7f2383a81f10bc1/icons/action-menu-icon.svg) > Share.
3. Click Copy link and share the link with users in your account.







 Creating quotes for classic infrastructure services
You might manage your payment method on a separate billing platform, [IBM Billing](https://myibm.ibm.com/billing/). For more information about that process, see [Managing your payment method outside of the console](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/billing-usage?topic=billing-usage-linkedusagepayment-method-ibm).
* Can I check the status of my account's updated payment method?

Yes, you can. When you request to change your payment method, a support case is created automatically. Go to the [Manage cases](https://cloud.ibm.com/unifiedsupport/cases) page in the IBM Cloud console to view the status of your request.
* Can I delete my credit card?

For Pay-As-you-Go accounts, you must have an active credit card on file. You can replace an existing credit card with a new one.



* If you're using a new US-based Pay-As-You-Go account with credit card billing, you can add a new credit card in the Monthly Payment Method form on the [Payments](https://cloud.ibm.com/billing/payments) page.
* For all other accounts, you can remove a credit card and switch to a different payment method by clicking Pay with Other > Submit change request. To complete the change, review and update the support case that is created for you.
* If you manage your payment method on a separate billing platform, you can remove your credit card by going to [IBM Billing](https://myibm.ibm.com/billing/). For more information, see [Managing your payment method outside of the console](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/billing-usage?topic=billing-usage-linkedusagepayment-method-ibm).



* How do I change the invoice currency from US Dollars to my local currency?

Invoicing in your local currency might be possible if you have a subscription or IBM Cloud Cloud Enterprise Savings Plan account type. Contact [IBM Cloud Cloud Sales](https://cloud.ibm.com/catalog?contactmodule) for more information.
You might manage your payment method on a separate billing platform, [IBM Billing](https://myibm.ibm.com/billing/). For more information about that process, see [Managing your payment method outside of the console](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/billing-usage?topic=billing-usage-linkedusagepayment-method-ibm).





 Can I check the status of my account's updated payment method? 

Yes, you can. When you request to change your payment method, a support case is created automatically. Go to the [Manage cases](https://cloud.ibm.com/unifiedsupport/cases) page in the IBM Cloud console to view the status of your request.





 Can I delete my credit card? 

For Pay-As-you-Go accounts, you must have an active credit card on file. You can replace an existing credit card with a new one.



* If you're using a new US-based Pay-As-You-Go account with credit card billing, you can add a new credit card in the Monthly Payment Method form on the [Payments](https://cloud.ibm.com/billing/payments) page.
* For all other accounts, you can remove a credit card and switch to a different payment method by clicking Pay with Other > Submit change request. To complete the change, review and update the support case that is created for you.
* If you manage your payment method on a separate billing platform, you can remove your credit card by going to [IBM Billing](https://myibm.ibm.com/billing/). For more information, see [Managing your payment method outside of the console](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/billing-usage?topic=billing-usage-linkedusagepayment-method-ibm).







 How do I change the invoice currency from US Dollars to my local currency? 

Invoicing in your local currency might be possible if you have a subscription or IBM Cloud Cloud Enterprise Savings Plan account type. Contact [IBM Cloud Cloud Sales](https://cloud.ibm.com/catalog?contactmodule) for more information.
* Better discounts on usage costs because subscriptions are larger
* Fewer expiration dates to track and manage after existing subscriptions expire



In an enterprise, subscriptions are managed from the enterprise account the same way as for a stand-alone account. For more information about managing your platform and support subscriptions, see [Managing subscriptions](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/billing-usage?topic=billing-usage-subscriptions).







 Usage reporting 

Enterprises provide top-down usage reporting so that you can track the costs of resource usage from all accounts in the enterprise. Starting at the enterprise level, you can navigate within the enterprise structure to see the estimated usage costs within each account or account group. At the account level, enterprise users can view costs for each type of resource or service in the account.

Enterprise administrators can provide granular access to users so that they can view usage only for certain account groups or accounts. For example, say that your enterprise has account groups for each department, and each department has account groups for each team.



* You give your financial officer access to view the entire enterprise so that they can track and recover costs for each department.
* You give each department lead access to view usage for everything in their department's account group.
* You give each team lead access to view only the accounts in their team's account group.



Because access in the enterprise is separate from access in each account, enterprise users can't automatically manage resources within the child accounts. Similarly, users in each account can continue to view their past and current usage from the Usage page regardless of whether they have enterprise access.

You can view usage from the Usage page in the console, from the CLI, or from the Enterprise Usage Reports API. For more information, see [Viewing usage in an enterprise](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/billing-usage?topic=billing-usage-enterprise-usage).





 Invoicing and payments 

Usage in the enterprise is invoiced through the enterprise account. As with all billable accounts, usage is invoiced monthly, and the invoice is due on the billing date for your account.
Changing the service plan of an instance 

When you provision an instance of the IBM Cloud Monitoring service, you must choose a service plan. Different plans offer different features. You can change the service plan at any time.

[Learn more about service plans](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/monitoring?topic=monitoring-pricing_plans).



 Changing the service plan through the Observability dashboard 

To change the service plan of an instance from the Observability dashboard in the IBM Cloud, complete the following steps:



1. [Log in to your IBM Cloud account](https://cloud.ibm.com/login).

After you log in with your user ID and password, the IBM Cloud UI opens.
2. Go to the menu icon ![Menu icon](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/icons/icon_hamburger.svg) and select Observability to access the Observability dashboard.
3. Select Monitoring.
4. Click the Actions icon ![Three dots icon](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs-content/v1/content/220cdcbf6f4421bd7fee83fd1028048dba3f16c8/monitoring/images/actions.png) next to the instance you want to change and click Edit plan.
5. Select a service plan.
6. Click Save.







 Changing the service plan through the CLI 

Complete the following steps to change the service plan:



1. [Pre-requisite] Installation of the IBM Cloud CLI. [Learn more](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/cli?topic=cli-getting-started).
2. Log in to the location in the IBM Cloud where the instance is provisioned. Run the following command: [ibmcloud login](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/cli?topic=cli-ibmcloud_cliibmcloud_login)
Some Pay-As-You-Go accounts can't be directly imported into an enterprise, such as many Pay-As-You-Go accounts that are billed in United States dollars (USD). However, you can still import these accounts into your enterprise by converting them to Subscription accounts and then importing them. To convert an account, contact [IBM Cloud Sales](https://www.ibm.com/cloud?contactmodule).

Each enterprise supports only a single billing currency. All accounts must use the enterprise billing currency before you add them to the enterprise. Existing accounts that are imported into the enterprise no longer separately manage their billing. As a result, subscription credit can't be added to individual child accounts. Subscription credit must be added to the enterprise account, where it becomes part of the enterprise credit pool.



 Billing transition when importing accounts 

When you import an existing account to an enterprise, its billing and invoicing transitions to being managed by the enterprise account. This transition includes the following changes to the account.



* For Subscription accounts that are added, the account type is changed to Pay-As-You-Go. This change reflects that the account does not have its own subscriptions, but it still has full access to production-ready, billable services.
* Subscriptions and promotions from each account are moved to the enterprise account, where they become part of the credit pool. After the move, each subscription has the same remaining credit and term period, but the subscription is given a new unique ID.
* Access to billing and payment information for future billing periods is restricted to users in the enterprise account. Users in a child account can't access billing and payment information, such as invoices, payments, or subscriptions, even if they previously had access in the account. To view or manage billing, users need to be invited to the enterprise account and given access to the Billing service in that account.
* Usage is invoiced to the enterprise account for the entire month when the account was added. For example, if you add an account to the enterprise on 15 June, all of the usage for the month of June is reflected in the July invoice.







 Shared credit pool
Billing is suspended only when you power off your virtual server instance through the IBM Cloud console, CLI, or SoftLayer API. If you power off your virtual server instance directly through the OS, billing isn't suspended for that instance.





 Provisioning details 

You can provision a virtual server instance that supports the suspend billing feature through the IBM Cloud catalog (cloud.ibm.com), CLI, or the SoftLayer API. You can't provision a virtual server instance that supports the suspend billing feature through the IBM Cloud infrastructure customer portal (control.softlayer.com). For more information about provisioning public virtual server instances, see [Provisioning public instances](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/virtual-servers?topic=virtual-servers-ordering-vs-publicordering-vs-public).

For the IBM Cloud catalog, you must have an upgraded account to order virtual servers. For more information about upgrading your account, see [Account types](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/account?topic=account-accounts).



 Provisioning through the API 

You can provision a virtual server instance that supports the suspend billing feature through the SoftLayer API. For API examples, see [Provisioning a public instance with Place Order Object](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/virtual-servers?topic=virtual-servers-api-rest-publicprovisioning-a-public-instance-using-place-order-object).

You must specify the specific suspend billing package ID during the provisioning process. You can query in the SoftLayer API for the suspend billing package ID by using the keyName SUSPEND_CLOUD_SERVER. For an example on searching for server packages, see [Understanding and building an order with the SoftLayer API order CLI](https://softlayer.github.io/article/understanding-ordering/).







 Billing details 

It's important to understand what costs stop accruing and what costs persist when your virtual server instance is powered off.



Table 1. Resource billing details
This table has row and column headers. The row headers identify the resource. The column headers identify whether billing stops or persists when your instance is powered off.
* What does "pricing per minute" mean?

For the Plus plan, pricing is based on the cumulative amount (number of minutes) of audio that you send to the service in any one month. The per-minute price of all audio that you recognize in a month is reduced once you reach the threshold of one million minutes of audio for that month. The price does not depend on how long the service takes to process the audio. (Per-minute pricing is different for the Standard plan.)

For information about pricing for the Plus and Standard plans, see the Speech to Text service in the [IBM Cloud® Catalog](https://%7BDomainName%7D/catalog/speech-to-text).
* Do you round up to the nearest minute for every call to the API?

IBM does not round up the length of the audio for every API call that the service receives. Instead, IBM aggregates all usage for the month and rounds to the nearest minute at the end of the month. For example, if you send two audio files that are each 30 seconds long, IBM sums the duration of the total audio for that month to one minute.
* Am I charged for all audio that I send, even audio that does not include speech?

Yes, all audio that you send to the service contributes to your cumulative minutes of audio. This includes silence and noisy audio that does not contain or otherwise contribute to speech recognition. Because the service must process all audio that it receives, it does not distinguish between the type or quality of audio that you send. For pricing purposes, three seconds of silence is equivalent to three seconds of actual speech.
* What advantages do I get by using a Speech to Text Premium plan?

The Premium plan offers developers and organizations all of the capabilities and features of the Plus plan. The plan also offers these additional features:



* The ability to use IBM Watson® services in the IBM Cloud® with data isolation and added security features such as IBM® Key Protect for IBM Cloud® (also referred to as Bring your own keys (BYOK)), Service Endpoints, Mutual Authentication, and US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) readiness.
Describe the details of your plan.
7. Choose the locations where your plan is available. All plans for a product use either global or per location. By selecting per location, you can specify different regions or data centers for each plan that you add.
8. Select a broker to link to the plan.

If you haven't finished adding the broker to your account, you will not see this option, and you can continue and save your pricing plan. However, you can't submit your pricing plan for approval until the broker is linked.
9. Click Save.



Before you can submit your pricing plan for approval, you must complete the following tasks:



* If you had to skip the step to link your broker to the plan because you didn't have one yet, start to develop your broker, and come back to link it to your plan when you're done.
* [Add metrics to your plan](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/sell?topic=sell-service-add-metrics) to determine how customers are charged, and request metering approval.
* [Add plan features](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/sell?topic=sell-service-pricing-infoservice-add-feature) to describe why a customer might want to choose a specific plan.
* When your metrics are approved, you can test the pricing and usage from a customer's perspective and provide evidence from your testing to get the final approval for your pricing plan.







 Listing pricing plan features 

If you completed the steps to define your pricing plan, you can add a list of features for the plan. These features uniquely identify your product's attributes and differentiate your pricing plan from others. By providing a list of features for your product, you can help customers choose the most suitable pricing plan for their use case.

You can add up to five features for your product, but you must add at least one. The first feature that you add appears more prominently. Include the most important and differentiating details as the first feature.

To add features for your service, complete the following steps:



1. In the IBM Cloud console, click the Navigation Menu icon !
For detailed usage and billing information, you can refer to the part number in your invoice. The part numbers in the invoice represent the charge unit. Refer to the following table to view the part numbers and its corresponding description.



 Part number Description 

 SOS_VIRTUAL_PROCESSOR_CORE_HOURS Scale out shared uncapped processor per core-hour 
 SOD_VIRTUAL_PROCESSOR_CORE_HOURS Scale out dedicated processor per core-hour 



| MHU_GIGABYTE_HOURS | High use RAM (>64 Gb per core) gigabyte-hour | | TIER_ONE_STORAGE_GIGABYTE_HOURS | Tier-1 storage gigabyte-hour | | TIER_THREE_STORAGE_GIGABYTE_HOURS | Tier-3 storage gigabyte-hour | | AIX_SMALL_APPLICATION_INSTANCE_HOURS | AIX scale out license per core-hour | | AIX_MEDIUM_APPLICATION_INSTANCE_HOURS | AIX enterprise license per core-hour | | IBMI_OS_PTEN_APPLICATION_INSTANCE_HOURS | IBM i OS P10 license per core-hour | | IBMI_OS_PTHIRTY_APPLICATION_INSTANCE_HOURS | IBM i OS P30 license per core-hour | | IBMI_LPP_PTEN_APPLICATION_INSTANCE_HOURS | IBM i LPP P10 license per core-hour | | IBMI_LPP_PTHIRTY_APPLICATION_INSTANCE_HOURS | IBM i LPP P30 license per core-hour | | SOC_VIRTUAL_PROCESSOR_CORE_HOURS | Scale out shared capped processor per core-hour |