> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.nextintent.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Pause and resume

> What happens when the cap pauses active mode, what the pause message tells you, the two ways a pause lifts, and why Turn on is refused while paused.

When the month's charges reach the cap, active mode pauses. The store drops to watch mode, keeps recording, and shows you what the pause is costing. The pause lifts when you raise the cap or when the billing month rolls over. This page is the exact behaviour.

## What pauses

* **Messages** are switched off. No sentence is shown to any shopper.
* The app remembers the switches as they were (Messages on, card on or off) so it can put them back.
* The app records the cap it paused at and the end of the current billing period.

## What keeps running

* Every visit is still read. Moments are still recorded, with the sentence that would have been shown, labelled "Left alone, nothing shown".
* Money, Moments and Reasons keep filling in.
* The pause counter on Home and Settings counts the stuck shoppers who would have been spoken to since the pause, and estimates, from this store's own spoken-to buying rate, how many of them would have bought and for how much.

## The message

On **Home** and **Settings → Billing**:

"Your cap is reached. Active mode is paused. Since 2:14 pm, 34 stalled shoppers would have been spoken to. Going by this store, about 5 of them would have bought, roughly \$360. Raise the cap to pick them up."

The estimate uses your store's own numbers: the share of spoken-to shoppers who bought this month and their average order. On a new store with few orders it says so.

## How the pause lifts

Only two things lift it:

1. **You raise the cap** above the cap the store paused at. Change it on **Settings → Billing**, approve in Shopify, and on your return active mode resumes with the switches as they were.
2. **The billing month rolls over.** Shopify starts a new usage period, the charges reset to zero, and the app resumes the next time it checks (the daily meter or the next time you open the app).

Shopify's balance reading a few cents under the cap is not a reason to resume: the next charge would not fit either, and a store that resumed and paused on every page load would be worse than one that stayed paused. A cap change to the same or a lower amount does not lift the pause.

## Turn on while paused

Pressing **Turn on** under Messages while paused is refused with a message to raise the cap first. Active mode with no room under the cap would speak to shoppers without being able to bill for it, and the app does not run in that state. Raise the cap and Messages come back on their own.

## Why pause rather than keep going

The alternative, common in the category, is to keep charging past what the merchant expected and explain later. The cap is a promise: the month's bill cannot pass it. The price of that promise is a pause, and the app's job is to make the cost of the pause visible so you can decide with numbers in front of you.

## Related

* [The cap](/shopify/billing/the-cap)
* [Watch mode](/shopify/how-it-works/watch-mode)
* [Switches](/shopify/settings/switches)