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Credit system - overview

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You can charge employers credits to post jobs and to feature them. You sell credits through Stripe, PayPal, WooCommerce, Paid Memberships Pro or MemberPress, and employers buy and track them from their dashboard.

How it works

Section titled “How it works”
  1. Set prices. Give a board a credit cost in Settings -> Boards (edit the board, Credit Cost Per Job). Posting stays free until you do. Set the price of the Featured upgrade under Settings -> Credits.
  2. Choose how credits are sold. Turn on Stripe or PayPal and add credit packs, or map a WooCommerce product, PMPro level or MemberPress membership to a credit amount.
  3. Employers buy credits. They open the Credits tab of their dashboard, pick a pack and pay. See Native Buy Credits checkout.
  4. Credits are held when a job is submitted to a paid board. If the balance is too short, nothing is created and the employer is sent to buy credits.
  5. Credits are spent when the job goes live. Approval, auto-publish and a moderator publishing from any screen all settle the hold.
  6. Credits come back if the job does not go live. A rejected, trashed or deleted job releases its hold, and the employer gets a credit refund email.

A job is charged once, whichever path moves it. Other cases:

  • A moderator publishes a job whose employer cannot pay: the job stays pending and goes live once the employer’s balance covers it (oldest first).
  • The employer resubmits a rejected job: the hold is taken again.
  • The employer moves the job to a board with a different price: only the difference is charged or returned.
  • An expired or closed job is brought back: it is charged as a new listing period at the board price. Developers can change this with the wcb_job_republish_credit_cost filter.

Setup checklist

Section titled “Setup checklist”

Employers can buy credits only when at least one selling route works:

  • Stripe or PayPal is enabled with valid keys and you have added at least one credit pack (or a custom-amount rate), or
  • a product, plan or membership is mapped under Credit mappings and its plugin is active.

If none works, the Credits settings tab shows “Employers can’t buy credits yet”, Career Board admin screens show “Employers can’t buy credits, but a board charges them” while any board charges credits, and employers see “Credits can’t be bought on this site yet” instead of a Buy button.

What credits pay for

Section titled “What credits pay for”
Charge What it covers Cost
Job post Posting a job to a paid board, resubmitting, and moving boards The board’s Credit Cost Per Job (default 0)
Featured upgrade Making a job Featured Settings -> Credits -> Featured upgrade (default 10)

Both costs pass through the wcbp_consumer_cost filter. The tiered pricing matrix uses it so paid members can post for less or for free. See Featured upgrade.

Credit ledger

Section titled “Credit ledger”

Every change to a balance is a row in an append-only ledger. Rows are never edited or deleted, and the balance is the sum of the rows.

Type Effect
topup Credits added (purchase, mapped product, admin top-up)
hold Credits reserved when a job is submitted
deduction Credits spent (job live), or removed by an admin deduction or a payment refund
refund A held amount returned
expiry Credits removed because a pack’s expiry passed

What employers see

Section titled “What employers see”
  • Their balance in the dashboard and on the Credits tab.
  • A low-balance banner once the balance falls to the Low Balance Alert number (default 5, set 0 to turn the banner and the email off). It shows only for employers who already have credit history.
  • The same panel on any page with the [wcbp_credit_balance] shortcode or the Credit Balance block. See Pro blocks reference.

Free job posts

Section titled “Free job posts”

Leave a board’s credit cost at 0 and posting stays free. You can charge later by setting a cost.

Where next

Section titled “Where next”