A wallet should distinguish provisional settlement from final settlement through explicit lifecycle states, not a single settled flag. A provisional entry is reversible or adjustable because usage, pricing, or reconciliation inputs remain incomplete. A final entry is correction-controlled and should be reached only after the expected authoritative provider record and applicable pricing inputs have been reconciled under documented rules. Later changes should create linked adjustments rather than overwrite transaction history.
The Short Answer: Represent Settlement as a Lifecycle, Not a Boolean Flag
Staged provider reporting creates several levels of certainty. An API response may confirm that a request completed, for example, while a later usage event supplies billable units and another record applies a correction. Provider acknowledgment, request completion, invoice issuance, and accounting finality can therefore occur at different times.
A boolean such as is_settled cannot express those distinctions. A more useful model assigns each wallet transaction an explicit state and records every permitted transition. Example states include:
- Reserved: Funds are held against an estimated maximum or expected charge.
- Provisionally posted: Interim usage has been recognized, but the amount can still change.
- Adjusted: New usage or pricing information has changed the provisional amount.
- Finalized: The wallet has received and reconciled the information required by its finalization policy.
- Reversed: A hold or posting has been released through a traceable reversal.
- Exception: The transaction cannot progress automatically because records are missing or conflicting.
These names are examples, not a universal standard. The appropriate states and transitions depend on provider behavior, pricing contracts, wallet terms, finance policy, and implementation requirements.
| Decision factor | Provisional settlement | Final settlement |
|---|---|---|
| Meaning | Interim accounting state based on incomplete, estimated, reserved, or partially reported usage | Correction-controlled state reached after required usage and pricing inputs have been reconciled |
| Mutability | Adjustable through linked postings, reversals, or revisions | Not routinely changed; later corrections use controlled, traceable adjustments |
| Inputs | Reservation estimates, interim usage, preliminary rates, or partial events | Expected authoritative usage, applicable pricing version, reconciliation result, and finalization policy |
| Balance effect | May reduce available funds or appear as provisional spend | Becomes finalized spend and normally releases any remaining hold |
| Correction method | Append an adjustment and retain the earlier record | Post a compensating or versioned correction rather than destructively editing history |
“Final” should not be treated as absolutely immutable if legitimate corrections are possible. In this context, it means ordinary processing is complete and any later change must follow a controlled correction path. It does not imply blockchain settlement finality.
Separate Reservation, Provisional Posting, Adjustment, and Finalization
The wallet should model each stage as a distinct responsibility. Combining authorization, usage recognition, and settlement into one operation makes it difficult to explain balances or recover safely from delayed events.
A practical flow can separate the following actions:
- Authorize and reserve. Confirm that the wallet can support the request, then place a hold based on the applicable reservation policy. The hold limits spend but is not yet finalized usage.
- Post provisional usage. When an interim provider event arrives, append a provisional posting linked to the reservation. Do not silently replace the hold or an earlier usage event.
- Apply adjustments. If the provider reports additional units, a corrected model classification, or another pricing input, append a positive or negative adjustment with its own source reference.
- Finalize. Once the required inputs and reconciliation conditions are satisfied, record the state transition and establish finalized spend.
- Release unused funds. If the reservation exceeds the finalized charge, release the unused portion through a linked entry.
- Route unresolved cases. Move missing, contradictory, or invalid records into an exception state instead of guessing that they are final.
Consider an illustrative request with a $10 hold. An interim event produces a provisional charge of $6, and a later provider update raises the reconciled charge to $7.50. Finalization posts or confirms $7.50 as finalized spend and releases the unused $2.50 hold. The ledger retains the original reservation, the $6 provisional event, the $1.50 adjustment, the finalization record, and the hold release.
The values and sequence above are examples. Some providers report cumulative totals, while others report deltas or revisions. The transaction model must identify which event semantics apply before calculating an adjustment.
Append-only records are especially valuable here. Silently changing a provisional amount from $6 to $7.50 destroys the explanation for why the balance changed and makes replay, customer support, and finance reconciliation harder. A correction may alter the economic result, but it should not erase the path used to reach that result.
Correlate Every Usage Stage and Make Posting Idempotent
Every event needs stable identifiers that let the wallet determine which request, provider transaction, usage period, and prior event it belongs to. Depending on the integration, useful fields may include:
- Internal wallet transaction and reservation IDs
- Internal request ID and provider request ID
- Provider account, endpoint, or model reference
- Usage-period or metering-window ID
- Provider event ID and revision number
- Idempotency key
- Received timestamp and provider-effective timestamp
- Pricing version or rate-plan reference
- Prior state, new state, and reason for transition
- Links among reservation, provisional, adjustment, final, and reversal records
The idempotency key should represent a specific posting operation or provider event—not merely the overall request. A request may legitimately produce several usage stages, so using only the request ID could suppress valid adjustments. Conversely, treating every delivery as new could charge a retried event twice.
A common control is to enforce uniqueness for a stable combination such as provider, provider event ID, event revision, and posting type. The wallet can then acknowledge a duplicate without applying its financial effect again. If the provider does not supply a reliable event ID, the integration may need a deterministic key derived from documented stable fields, with collision and revision handling designed explicitly.
Event processing also needs to tolerate imperfect delivery:
- Duplicate or retried events: Return the result of the original posting rather than applying another charge.
- Delayed events: Preserve both the effective time and arrival time, then evaluate the event against the transaction’s current state.
- Partial events: Keep the transaction provisional until the required stages or completion indicators arrive.
- Out-of-order events: Store valid events and defer transitions whose prerequisites have not yet been processed.
- Corrected events: Link the revision to the event it supersedes and post the resulting delta.
- Unknown events: Quarantine records that cannot be associated reliably rather than assigning them to a likely request.
Idempotency reduces duplicate application risk, but it does not by itself establish pricing correctness. The wallet still needs schema validation, event-version handling, reconciliation logic, and traceable pricing decisions.
Show Available Funds, Holds, Provisional Spend, and Finalized Spend Separately
A single displayed balance can overstate certainty. Users and operators should be able to distinguish money that remains available from money that is reserved, provisionally consumed, or finalized.
A wallet interface or API may expose:
- Available funds: Amount currently available for new authorization decisions under the wallet’s balance policy.
- Active holds: Funds reserved for requests that have not been fully released or finalized.
- Provisional spend: Usage recognized from interim records but still subject to adjustment.
- Finalized spend: Charges that have completed the defined reconciliation and finalization process.
The balance equation depends on how provisional postings interact with holds. One design may treat provisional usage as consuming part of an existing reservation; another may represent the hold and usage separately while preventing double subtraction in the available-balance calculation. Labels and equations must be consistent across the ledger, API, user interface, statements, and support tools.
Customer-facing language should also explain what “pending” or “provisional” means. It should not imply that a charge is final merely because an API call completed. Operators may need a more detailed view showing the source event, pricing version, current state, unresolved amount, and expected next action.
Finance and accounting stakeholders should review any treatment that affects liabilities, refunds, credits, taxes, revenue recognition, or statutory reporting. A useful operational display does not automatically determine the correct accounting treatment.
Define When Usage Becomes Final and How Later Corrections Work
Finalization should be driven by documented criteria rather than elapsed time alone. Candidate conditions include:
- The expected authoritative provider usage record has arrived.
- All usage components required for pricing are present.
- The applicable pricing plan and version are known.
- Interim totals and authoritative totals have been reconciled.
- Required provider completion or revision indicators have been received.
- The configured reconciliation window has expired without unresolved discrepancies.
The reconciliation window should reflect actual provider behavior, contractual terms, correction patterns, and operating policy. There is no universal duration suitable for every API or workload. A timeout can trigger review or policy-based handling, but time passing does not make incomplete information authoritative by itself.
The finalization record should capture why the transition was allowed: the input events used, reconciliation result, pricing version, effective time, processing time, previous state, new state, and actor or system responsible for the decision. This creates a reproducible explanation of the charge.
Information can still change after finalization. A provider might issue corrected usage, apply a credit, or identify an event associated with the wrong account. In that situation, the wallet should avoid reopening history through destructive mutation. Instead, it can post a compensating adjustment or create a versioned correction linked to the finalized record.
That distinction preserves two facts at once: what the wallet considered final at the time and what later information changed the economic outcome. Correction authority, customer notifications, statement presentation, and accounting treatment should be defined in policy rather than improvised during an incident.
Reconcile Missing, Conflicting, and Never-Finalized Usage
Some transactions will not follow the expected path. A provider’s final event may never arrive, an interim total may exceed a later total, or two records may claim to be authoritative. These cases need an explicit exception workflow.
A reconciliation process can compare the wallet’s reservations and postings with provider usage data by request, account, model, usage period, and event revision. Differences should retain their provenance: both conflicting records, their timestamps, the pricing logic applied, and any manual decision. Replacing the earlier record would conceal the conflict.
Useful exception categories include:
- Missing final usage after the configured review point
- Final usage with no matching reservation or request
- Provisional records whose total conflicts with an authoritative record
- Pricing inputs that are unavailable or refer to an unknown version
- Events received after a transaction has already been finalized
- Multiple records asserting incompatible final totals
- Holds that remain active after their associated usage is resolved
Each category can have a documented response: retry ingestion, query the provider, wait for an expected stage, apply a controlled reversal, post a correction, or escalate for operational review. Automatic handling should be limited to cases where the event semantics and financial policy are sufficiently clear.
Never-finalized usage deserves particular attention. Leaving it provisional indefinitely can tie up customer funds and distort operational reporting. Automatically declaring it final can be equally problematic. A better approach is to move it into an exception state after a configured condition, preserve the hold and posting history, and apply the organization’s documented resolution policy.
Operational metrics can track the age and value of unresolved transactions, duplicate-event rates, out-of-order arrivals, correction frequency, and unreleased holds. These indicators help teams identify integration problems without pretending that every discrepancy has the same cause.
Place the Wallet Boundary Correctly in an AI API Architecture
The wallet and settlement layer should remain distinct from the model-serving layer. The wallet owns authorization policy, reservations, balances, financial postings, lifecycle transitions, and reconciliation rules. The serving or API-access layer supplies the request and usage context that the wallet consumes. Usage telemetry is an input to settlement; it is not itself a financial ledger.
Token Forge Cloud offers Managed Model APIs for API-first model access and usage data, with a path toward private deployment as workloads become predictable. Token Forge Cloud Private LLM Inference focuses on private LLM inference and serving-layer optimization, including caching, routing, batching, quantization, and GPU scheduling. We treat latency-sensitive chat, batch enrichment, and agentic workflows as different serving-policy problems.
The wallet lifecycle described in this guide is an architectural pattern, not a Token Forge Cloud wallet, settlement ledger, or provider-reconciliation feature. Teams integrating model access with prepaid balances should define a clear interface between usage production and financial posting. That interface should specify identifier ownership, event semantics, pricing responsibility, versioning, replay behavior, and which system determines finality.
This separation also makes deployment choices easier to evaluate. Teams using managed model APIs may need to normalize usage records across provider-facing interfaces. Teams moving toward private inference may gain more control over serving telemetry, but they still need an independently governed wallet and accounting design. In either case, the settlement system should consume well-defined usage events without assuming that request completion automatically establishes a final charge.
Contact Token Forge Cloud to discuss your needs for API access, private deployment, and LLM inference cost control.