--- title: "Ask Billy, the assistant" description: "Billy answers questions about your billing from your own data, checks every figure, shows you where to act, and prepares changes that you confirm." canonical_url: "https://twominutebilling.com/help/guides/ask-billy" --- # Ask Billy, the assistant > Billy answers questions about your billing from your own data, checks every figure, shows you where to act, and prepares changes that you confirm. Billy is the assistant inside the dashboard. Ask it about your invoices, customers, subscriptions, payments and MRR, or about how Two Minute Billing works. Billy reads your data through the same API as the dashboard, checks every figure in its answer against that data, and links to the screen where you act. ## Open Billy - Select **Ask Billy** at the top of the left menu, or press **⌘J** (**Ctrl+J** on Windows and Linux). - On an invoice, customer, subscription or payment page, select **Ask about this invoice** (or customer, subscription, payment). Billy then answers about that record. - In the search box (**⌘K**), type a question and select **Ask Billy**. Billy shows questions to start with for the page you are on. Your conversations are your own: no other member sees them. ## What an answer shows - **The steps Billy took**, such as "Explained invoice INV-1043". - **The answer**, with record cards and small tables. Select a record to open it. - **"Every figure found in your data"** when Billy found each number in what it read. A number that Billy could not find has a dotted underline and a warning. Check it before you use it. - **Questions to ask next.** Select one to send it. Under each answer, select **Copy**, **Ask again**, or rate the answer as **Helpful** or **Not helpful**. When an answer is not helpful, you can add a short comment. We read these comments to make Billy better. ## When Billy asks a question Some requests need a choice, for example which of two customers you mean, or how to treat unused time when a subscription is cancelled. Billy then asks one short question with buttons. Your business's own default is selected and labelled **Your default**. Select an option, press its number key, or select **Type a different answer**. ## Tools in the message box Select **+** in the message box to: - **Attach a screenshot**, such as a bank's email or an error from another site, for Billy to explain. Billy accepts images only: PNG, JPEG or WebP, up to 10 MB each. You can also paste an image. - **Mention a record**: type **@** and a name, an email or an invoice number to point Billy at a customer, invoice or subscription. - **Start a task**: explain an invoice, explain an MRR change, find a screen, or search the help. Screenshots stay with the conversation. We delete them when you delete the conversation, and in all cases after 90 days. ## Billy uses your permissions Billy can read and do only what your role allows. Each look-up goes through the API with your sign-in, so a member who cannot see invoices gets no answers about invoices. See [Your team, roles and logs](https://twominutebilling.com/help/guides/your-team). ## Changes that you confirm An owner can let Billy prepare changes. Then you can ask, for example, "pause dunning on this invoice until Friday" or "move this customer to the yearly plan". 1. Billy reads the record, asks for any choice it needs, and gets the engine's preview where there is one, for example what a cancellation does to money. 2. Billy shows a card with exactly what it will send and the preview figures. Nothing changes yet. 3. Select **Confirm** to make the change, or **Back** to stop. A card that you do not confirm expires after 15 minutes. The change is made with your permissions, one time only. The record's activity log shows that you made it, **via Billy**. **Money changes** are refunds, credit notes, collecting a payment now, charging a payment request, invoicing now, applying credits, recording a payment, voiding or writing off an invoice, and cancelling now with a credit or a refund. They need a second switch and, each time, a second confirmation: "You cannot undo this". Billy never deletes records, never changes payment methods, settings, the team or API keys, and never makes a change through an AI tool that you connect from outside (see [AI assistants (MCP)](https://twominutebilling.com/help/developers/getting-started/connect-ai-assistants)). ### Let Billy make changes An owner or admin goes to **Settings → Billy**: - **Let Billy take actions**: Billy can prepare changes. It is off at first. - **Allow money actions**: also money changes. You can turn it on only when actions are on. ## Included use and your own key On Two Minute Billing Cloud, each plan includes Billy credits every month: 50 on Free, 300 on Launch, 1,000 on Growth and 3,000 on Scale. A credit is about one question. A long question that reads a lot of data can use more than one. **Settings → Billy** shows how many credits you used this month. Credits start again on the first day of each month. To use Billy beyond your credits, add your own key from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google in **Settings → Billy**. Questions then go to your provider on your account, and they do not count against your credits. We store the key encrypted and show only its last four characters. An owner can turn Billy off for the organization in **Settings → Billy**. ## Where your data goes To answer, Billy sends your question and the data it read for it to the AI model: our model provider on Cloud, or your provider when you add your own key. Customer names, notes and metadata are sent as data, and Billy treats them as data, never as instructions. Screenshots are sent as images. ## Self-hosted installations Billy is off until you set a model in the engine's environment: `ASSISTANT_PROVIDER` (`openai`, `anthropic` or `google`), `ASSISTANT_MODEL` and `ASSISTANT_API_KEY`. To use a local model with an OpenAI-compatible server, also set `ASSISTANT_BASE_URL`. There are no credits on a self-hosted installation, and no limit unless you set `ASSISTANT_ORG_MONTHLY_TOKENS`. ## Sitemap See the full [sitemap](https://twominutebilling.com/sitemap.md) for all pages.