Access and collection
Billing and access for CDRs: which organization can download a record, and which organization is charged for it.
Every organization pays for its own access
An organization can download a record once it has collected it. Collecting makes that organization a payer for the record, and it happens in one of three ways:
- Auto-collect, when the record is captured on one of your own sites.
- Receiving a shared record. Opening a share URL always collects the record for your organization, so it arrives in your account ready to download.
- An explicit collect call for a record already in your account.
Access is never inherited. It makes no difference whether the organization that shared the record with you had paid for it, or how many times the record has changed hands: each organization that holds the evidence has its own payment on record. Several organizations can pay for the same record independently, and each one sees its own charge.
An organization that already has access is never charged again, however it later receives or collects the same record.
No record without access
You cannot receive a record into your account without collecting it. Receiving is refused, rather than saved, for any organization that cannot be billed, so a record never sits in an account that cannot open it.
Auto-collect
For organizations with billing set up, auto-collect is on by default: your organization is treated as the payer for records captured on your own sites, and access is granted as each record finishes processing.
If you generate leads and want your buyers to be the payers, turn it off under Organization → Settings → Billing, where it reads "Charge this org for CDRs captured on its websites". You need permission to manage the organization to change it. With it off, records you capture sit in your account uncollected: visible, searchable, not downloadable.
Dev Mode is a preview, not access
A capture made with devMode: true is always free and uncollected. It creates no payment, billing
attribution, or access-grant document, even when auto-collect is on. Owner API responses therefore show
devMode: true, collected: false, and no downloadUrl.
Members of the organization that captured it can preview its image and supporting documents in the
dashboard. They can also create visibly marked public viewer links and PDFs. Those paths are review
exceptions, not collection: they do not make the organization a payer, do not grant download
access, and do not let a recipient claim the CDR. Collect and API-transfer attempts return 409 CDR_DEV_MODE.
Passthrough organizations
Passthrough organizations have no billing set up. They can capture records and forward share URLs to their buyers, but they cannot collect, cannot become the payer on a share, and cannot receive a shared record into their own account. Opening a share URL is refused rather than saved. They also have no server-to-server API access by default.
They can preview Dev Mode records they produced in the dashboard without setting up billing. This does not let them receive or collect a record. If that is how your organization is configured, the auto-collect setting does not appear. Talk to us to set up billing and the production restrictions lift.