The Add funds page is where you top up a team budget with a credit card. It's a single-page checkout—you fill out one form, click Checkout, and your receipt appears in place of the form. Funds are available immediately, so you can launch or unpause a survey right after.
In This Article
- Terminology
- Before You Begin
- Adding Funds
- Adding a New Credit Card
- Completing Checkout
- Troubleshooting
Terminology
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Prefund amount | The dollar amount you're charging to your card and adding to a budget. |
| Budget | A pool of funds a team draws from to pay for surveys. On this page, budgets are destinations only—you can't pay from one here. |
| Parent budget | A budget that other budgets roll up into. If the budget you pick has a parent, the money lands on the parent—which is also the balance you'll see in the dropdown. |
| Wallet | The page where saved credit cards live. Adding, editing, and deleting cards on their own happens there, not on the Add funds page. |
| Transfer funds | The control on the Budgets page for moving money between existing budgets. Use it when no new charge is involved. |
Before You Begin
Adding funds requires budget-management access and an active subscription. It's the same access that shows the Budgets item in your account menu, so if you can see Budgets, you can add funds.
- Single-team accounts—any active member can add funds.
- Multi-team accounts—account admins always can. Other members can too, unless your account is configured to hide the Budgets page. Being a team admin doesn't override that setting; only an account admin does.
- If you don't see Add funds anywhere, ask an account admin to add funds or to grant you access.
How to Get There
There are two ways in:
-
Top navigation bar—click Add funds. It sits directly on the nav bar.
-
Budgets page—open a budget row's Manage menu and choose Add funds. This preselects that budget as the destination.
Add funds is a standalone checkout page, so it doesn't show the account sidebar. There's no sidebar link to it either.
💡 Tip: Starting from the Budgets page is the safer route when you have several budgets—it fills in the destination for you, so there's no chance of funding the wrong one. Frozen budgets can't be topped up, and their Add funds control is disabled with a note explaining why.
Adding Funds
The form runs top to bottom in a single pass. Nothing is charged until you click Checkout.
- Pick a team. On multi-team accounts, use the team dropdown at the top of the form. It's searchable—start typing to filter if you have a lot of teams. Single-team accounts skip this step.
- Enter a Prefund amount. The $ prefix is fixed. The field accepts digits, thousands commas, and up to two decimal places—letters and symbols can't be typed or pasted in, so if nothing appears on screen, that's why.
- Choose a payment method. Pick a saved card from the dropdown, or choose Add new credit card at the bottom of the list. Credit cards only.
- Choose which budget receives the funds under Add funds to. A panel appears below showing how much will be transferred, to which budget, and the projected New balance. It updates live as you change the amount—no need to refresh.
- Add transaction notes (optional). Use it for a job reference, invoice number, or anything else you'll want on the receipt. Plain text only, trimmed to 200 characters.
- Check the terms box to confirm you accept the Terms of Use and US Privacy Guidelines. Clicking the label text toggles the box; clicking the links opens the documents.
- Click Checkout.
⚠️ Note: Funds from refunds or pre-funding that remain unspent for more than one year from the refund or funding date may be subject to loss after email notification is sent to the address associated with the account or a notification is otherwise posted to the Account. Any new payment extends that period by another year from the date of the last payment.
⚠️ Note: Switching teams mid-form clears everything—amount, notes, card, budget, and the terms checkbox—with no warning. The empty fields are your only signal. Pick your team first, then fill out the rest.
Adding a New Credit Card
You can add a card without leaving the page. Select Add new credit card from the payment method dropdown and a form opens underneath it: a title field for the card, plus the card fields themselves. Card details go straight to our payment provider and are never handled by aytm.
Your bank may ask you to verify while the card is saving. Complete that prompt and the card saves. Here's what happens next in each case:
- Card saved—the panel closes and your new card is selected automatically.
- Card already on file—aytm reuses the existing card instead of creating a duplicate, and a message appears inside the panel. Dismiss the panel to continue.
- Card declined or verification not completed—the reason appears in the panel.
Checkout stays greyed out the whole time the add-card panel is open. Close or complete the panel to re-enable it.
Completing Checkout
When you click Checkout, your card is charged and the funds are credited to the budget in one step. The form is replaced in place by a receipt card—the same one you'll find on the Transactions page—with its own print icon. The heading becomes a success message and the button changes to Navigate to budgets.
If the budget you selected has a parent budget, the funds land on the parent. Tax, where it applies, appears on the receipt rather than on the form.
Reloading the page afterward gives you a fresh, blank form. Your receipt stays on the Transactions page from that point on.
⚠️ Note: The charge is final once it settles. There's no cancel or refund from this page. If something went wrong with a transaction, contact support with the receipt.
If Your Bank Asks You to Verify
Your bank may ask the cardholder to authenticate before approving the charge. Nothing is charged and no transaction appears in your account until you finish that step, and Checkout stays locked while the prompt is open so you can't submit twice underneath it.
- Complete the prompt—your receipt appears exactly as it normally would.
- Close the prompt—nothing is charged.
- Lose your browser or connection after authenticating—no action needed. aytm finds the charge and credits your budget automatically, typically within about 20 minutes.
Troubleshooting
Most problems on this page are one of the messages below.
| What happened | What you'll see | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Terms box isn't checked | "Please accept the Terms of Use and US Privacy Guidelines to continue", under the checkbox | Check the box. Checkout stays greyed out until you do. |
| Amount is empty or zero | "Enter a Prefund amount to continue", under the amount field | Enter an amount greater than zero. |
| No card selected | "Select or add a payment method to continue", under the payment method field | Pick a saved card or add a new one. |
| Card declined | Your bank's reason where one is given, otherwise a general decline message, in a block below Checkout | Check with your bank, or try a different card. |
| Network or unknown error | "Something went wrong. Please check your transactions or try again later." in a block below Checkout | Open the Transactions page before you retry. This message means the result of the charge is unknown—your receipt will be there if it went through. |
Will I Be Charged Twice?
Retrying the same checkout after a failure or a timeout won't charge you twice. Running two separate checkouts for the same amount will charge twice—that's deliberate, since funding the same budget twice in a row is a legitimate thing to do.
Things You Can't Do From This Page
- Pay from another budget. Budgets are destinations here. To move money between budgets, use Transfer funds on the Budgets page. Survey checkout is a separate page and does let a budget be the payment source.
- Cancel or refund a charge. Contact support instead.
- Set up recurring or scheduled top-ups. Auto-recharge is a separate feature.
- Manage saved cards. Adding, editing, and deleting cards on their own happens on the Wallet page.