# Entitlement

An **entitlement** is what a workspace's subscription permits. It holds which commercial arrangement the workspace is on, whether that arrangement is in good standing, the daily limits it carries, and whether outbound mail must carry a sending signature. Feature access and usage volume are stored as separate things, and neither of them can move a safety rule.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **In the app:** #/billing
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/glossary/entitlement/

## Two questions that look like one

*Can this workspace use the phone at all* and *how many calls may it place today* are different questions, and merging them produces a product that either hides features to enforce a limit or enforces nothing because the feature is visible. Connect keeps them apart: feature access is one field, the daily limits are another, and a workspace can hold every feature while having a small allowance.

| Field | Question it answers |
|---|---|
| Plan | Which commercial arrangement this workspace is on |
| Status | Whether that arrangement is currently in good standing |
| Feature access | Whether the capability set is open to it |
| Daily limits | The volumes the [allowance](/docs/glossary/allowance/) ledger counts against |
| Sending signature | Whether outgoing mail carries a line saying it was sent with Connect, and what that line says |

The last row surprises people, and it is an entitlement rather than a setting because it is part of what the arrangement includes. It is stored beside the flag rather than hard-coded, so it is one record to inspect rather than a string hidden in the sending path.

## What an entitlement can never do

It cannot open a safety gate. [Autonomy](/docs/glossary/autonomy/) rules, [suppression](/docs/glossary/suppression/), do-not-contact and [workspace isolation](/docs/glossary/workspace/) are enforced separately, and no commercial tier — including the operator's own unlimited standing — bypasses any of them. A generous tier buys volume, not permission.

It also cannot be asserted by a browser. Whatever the screen believes about the arrangement is informational; the gate is checked on the server at the moment the action is attempted, which is the only place the answer can be trusted.

> **Note** The Owner workspace has no plan and no gates, because the platform operator is running Connect rather than buying it. Every capability is otherwise identical between the two audiences — the difference is commercial, not functional.

## Entitlement, allowance, autonomy, permission

**An [allowance](/docs/glossary/allowance/)** — What is left of a period's volume, right now. The entitlement declares the limit; the allowance is the ledger counting down from it.
**[Autonomy](/docs/glossary/autonomy/)** — Whether Connect may act without asking. Entirely unrelated to the commercial arrangement — a workspace on any tier can require approval for everything.
**A person's permission** — Which member of a workspace may do a thing. Entitlement is about the workspace as a whole; two colleagues in one workspace need not have the same rights.
**A feature flag** — A release mechanism for code. An entitlement is a commercial statement about one workspace, and the two change for different reasons and on different timescales.

The one that bites in practice is the second. A workspace whose replies are all waiting for approval has an autonomy setting, not a commercial one, and upgrading anything will not release them.

## Questions

### What happens when a plan lapses?

The status field is what changes, and the gate reads it at the moment of the action. What stops and what continues is set out in [a lapsed plan](/docs/account/lapsed-plan/) — the records themselves are not affected by its state.

### Are limits the same for every workspace on one tier?

The limits are carried on the workspace's own entitlement rather than looked up from a shared table, so a workspace can hold values that differ from the tier's defaults without the arrangement itself changing.

### Can I see what my workspace is entitled to?

Yes, on Plan & Usage, which shows the entitlement beside the usage counted against it — see [entitlements](/docs/account/entitlements/).

## Related

- [Allowance](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/glossary/allowance/)
- [Autonomy](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/glossary/autonomy/)
- [Entitlements and runtime choice](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/account/entitlements/)
- [Your plan](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/account/plan/)
- [Workspace](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/glossary/workspace/)

## What this page is based on

- `backend/app/models.py` — the workspace entitlement record and its fields
- `backend/app/tenant_entitlements.py` — the plan gate; browser state is informational
- docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md §1 — one feature set; the Owner has no plan and no gates