procedure

Fund a campaign

The launch check reserves the fee as well as the media. That surprises people.

Funding runs through a prepaid wallet with a £100 minimum top-up. The check at launch covers the media plus the maximum platform fee on it rather than the media alone, so a campaign cannot go live with enough money for the buy and not enough for the fee. If the wallet is short, the refusal names the exact amount rather than declining generically. One gate matters more than all the others: a wallet holding sandbox-minted credit is refused for live execution outright, so a sandbox balance can never become real spend.
steps
5
roughly
Ten minutes
things needed first
3
before you start

What you need first

  • An approved plan, with prechecked creative bound to every line
  • A payment method, for a live campaign
  • For live media specifically: a design-partner engagement, because no rail is spend-verified
the procedure

5 steps

Every step carries the thing that goes wrong at it, in its own block. That is the part worth reading.

  1. step 01

    Top up the wallet

    The smallest credit the buyer-facing contract accepts is £100. Top-ups, spend, asset charges, asset refunds and the platform fee are five distinct entry kinds in one ledger.

    what goes wrong here

    That ledger design is why a statement reads as a sequence of events rather than a single total, and why the fee sits beside the media it was charged on.

  2. step 02

    Understand what the launch check reserves

    The funding check at launch covers the media and the maximum platform fee on it, under serialisable isolation so two simultaneous launches cannot both pass against the same balance.

    what goes wrong here

    Budgeting for the media alone is the most common reason a first launch is refused.

  3. step 03

    Read the shortfall if it refuses

    An insufficient balance returns the exact amount short — "wallet is £X short of the launch commitment" — rather than a generic decline.

    what goes wrong here

    The check fails closed by default. Only a sandbox preview may opt into warning instead, which is the right way round: a preview that warns is useful, a live buy that warns is a bill.

  4. step 04

    Know that asset charges are a harder gate

    AI asset production has no warn-only path at all, because a real provider cost is incurred the moment a job is submitted. If the wallet cannot cover it, it does not submit.

    what goes wrong here

    A definite provider failure refunds automatically. An ambiguous outcome retains the charge and disables retry, so a duplicate render cannot be produced and billed, and it is cleared by a named human.

  5. step 05

    Expect funds to stay held through reconciliation

    On a live line the reservation is not released until spend is reconciled to the provider's own invoice or account export, and the final match is rechecked in the same transaction as the release.

    what goes wrong here

    Missing, mismatched or stale evidence keeps the money held. That is deliberate: releasing on an unverified report is how a reconciliation gap becomes a write-off.

what you end up with

A funded campaign with the fee reserved alongside the media, or a refusal naming the exact shortfall.

other procedures

What else you might need to do

45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live.

Talk it through

Questions

Is my wallet balance protected if the company fails?

Not in the way client money in a segregated account would be, and it is worth asking rather than assuming. A wallet balance is a claim on Tenhaw LTD. Reservations against live campaigns are held until spend reconciles to the provider invoice, which limits how far ahead of delivery the balance runs, but it does not make the balance bankruptcy-remote. Fund what you are about to spend rather than a quarter in advance, and raise it in the contract if it matters to your finance team.