Study wallet
In Trialflare, the Wallet is a centralised fund used to cover the billable costs associated with running your study. This guide will help you understand how to fund your study, monitor spending, and manage your balance.
What is the Wallet used for?
The Wallet ensures that your study operations run without interruption. Funds in your wallet are used to pay for:
- Communications: Sending SMS segments and WhatsApp messages to participants.
- Video Services: Hosting participant video calls and generating automated transcriptions.
- Participant Incentives: Purchasing vouchers or gift cards to reward study completion.
- Identity Checks: Verifying a participant's identity (e.g. in eConsent flows).
Note: Funds stay in your wallet indefinitely until spent. There are currently no time or usage limits on deposited funds.
Permissions & Access
To view or interact with the Wallet, you must have one of the following roles/permissions:
- Study Administrator
- "Manage Wallet" permission
If you have the required permissions, you can access the wallet by navigating to: My Study > Settings > Wallet (tab).
Topping Up Your Balance
You can add funds to your wallet at any time to ensure your study remains active.
- Navigate to the Top up section on the Wallet page.
- Select a preset amount (£50, £100, £250, £500) or enter a Custom amount.
- Click Top up.
- Enter your payment details via our secure checkout.
Payment Security
All payments are handled securely by Stripe. Trialflare never sees or stores your full credit card or billing details.
Invoices
Once a payment is confirmed, a PDF invoice will be generated automatically. You can download these directly from the transaction history for your accounting records.
Monitoring Costs & Transactions
Current Pricing
Because provider costs can fluctuate, Trialflare lists live pricing for all billable items directly on the Wallet page. We recommend checking this section periodically to stay informed of the current rates for SMS, WhatsApp, and Video services.
WhatsApp is not a single rate. Meta assigns every message template a category and charges very differently between them, so the Wallet page lists a rate for each kind of message:
- Notifications, support and invitations — consent confirmations, support replies and meeting invites. Meta treats these as utility messages, at its cheaper rate.
- Reminders — stage reminders. Meta classifies reminders as marketing however transactional they are, and charges around three times the utility rate for them. That classification is Meta's to make, not ours.
- Codes — verification codes.
- Reply in chat — a free-form message you send a participant inside an open conversation.
Each WhatsApp charge in your transaction history names the Meta category it was billed at — utility, marketing, authentication or service — so you can see which kind of message is driving the cost. If reminder spend is higher than you would like, sending fewer stage reminders is the lever that moves it most.
Our verification provider charges per check according to the document type and the checks your study has configured.
AI features are charged by how much text the model reads and writes, not per use, so a long form or a detailed question costs more than a short one. The rate depends on the model, and Trialflare chooses the model for each feature, so the pricing table lists AI as As used rather than a fixed unit price. Everything that uses AI is charged this way, including the checks Trialflare runs on your data in the background. The one exception is building a study with the Trial builder, which is free.
Charges for AI arrive as a single entry per study rather than one per question, so a session with the assistant appears as one line naming the features it covered and how many calls it made.
Transaction History
Every charge—from a single SMS to a bulk voucher purchase—is logged in the Transaction History table. Each entry includes:
- A description of the item/service.
- The date of the transaction.
- The price deducted (in GBP).
Balance Management & Transfers
Low balance emails
You don't have to watch the balance yourself. If you can manage the wallet (see Permissions & Access above), Trialflare emails you when spending takes the balance below £10, and again if the balance goes negative. Each email links straight to the Wallet page so you can top up.
These emails are sent when the balance crosses those points, not for every charge, so a busy study won't fill your inbox.
Overdrafts
To prevent a service cutoff during critical study moments, we enable small wallet overdrafts. However, we strongly recommend maintaining a positive balance to ensure all automated communications and video services continue to function without delay.
One limit covers every kind of spending, so there is a single number to watch rather than a different threshold per feature. Once a study is more than £10 overdrawn, everything the wallet pays for stops until it is topped up — messages, video calls, incentives, identity checks and AI alike.
For AI, that means two things. Anything someone starts themselves — the assistant, generating stages from a description, describing a calculation, refreshing insights by hand — asks you to top up instead of running. And the work Trialflare does on its own stops without saying so: smart automatic queries will not check submitted data for anomalies, and participant and trial insights will not be produced. Submitted data is stored exactly as normal throughout; only the AI review of it is skipped, and that review is not performed retrospectively once the wallet is topped up. If your study relies on smart automatic queries, keep the balance above zero. Building a study with the Trial builder is free and is never stopped.
Moving Funds
If a trial ends and you have leftover funds, these can be transferred to another active trial. To request a balance transfer, please contact your Account Manager.
Need more help?
If you have questions about a specific charge or need assistance with a large-scale top-up via bank transfer, please reach out to our support team or your dedicated Account Manager.