When you use the monday AI platform, you will have access to two powerful tools in your arsenal: Automations and Integrations.

These are incredibly useful tools that maximize your work processes so you can focus on your most important instead of rote tasks that eat up valuable time. 

Both of these tools consume actions, so it's important to understand what actions are, how they work, and how to track action usage. 

This article will walk you through everything you need to know about Automation and Integration actions and how to manage your monthly action limit.

What is an action?

An action is a main component of monday.com's pricing model. You can learn more about how actions impact pricing by visiting our Automation and Integration Pricing article.

Every automation template has a trigger and an action (or multiple actions).

Let's look at an example: "When a status changes to something, delete the item"

In this case, the trigger is "When a status changes to something". The action is "delete the item".

So every time an item is deleted, one action is used. If you were to trigger this template three times, three items would be deleted and that would count as three actions used.

Note: Every account has an action limit - one for Automations and one for Integrations. To learn more about the action limit for your account, read the What happens if I exceed my actions? section or check out the Pricing Page.

How many actions does one automation use?

For the most part, triggering one automation template will result in using one action.

However, there are a handful of templates that will result in multiple actions each time they are triggered. The following are a few examples:

Example 1: When status changes to something, create an item in board

If a template maps information into a new item, actions are used differently than in other templates. Any time an item is mapped, if the Status, Tag, People, Dropdown columns, or Update Section are mapped, each will count as one action used. Additionally, one action will be used for creating the item.

Let's look at this template as an example:

If you choose to use this template and you map the item as follows:

Each time the automation is triggered, three actions will be used. That is because two Status columns are mapped and an item is being created.

Note: To learn more about mapping, take a look at the column mapping section of this article.

Example 2: When a status changes to something, notify board subscribers

Any notification template can be configured to notify the board subscribers or a team instead of an individual:

In that case, an action will be used for each notification sent out. Meaning that, if you have 6 board subscribers, 6 actions will be used each time this automation runs.

Example 3: When status changes to something, send an email to Text Column

The Gmail integration or Outlook integration can send an email to an email column or a text column. While an email column can hold one email address, a text column can hold multiple email addresses. These integrations can also send an email to a team or the board's subscribers. All of these instances will result in using multiple actions.

For example, this template:

This template will actually result in using 2 actions, because the Name column reads as follows:

Example 4: Every time period, create an item

Any template that occurs "every time period" is a perpetual template. In the case of the template below, a new item will be created every day. One action is used each time this template runs and an item is created.

If the Status, Tag, People, Dropdown columns, or Update Section are mapped in the new item creation, each will count as one additional action used.

Custom templates with more than one action

If you're building a custom template, it's likely that your template will involve multiple actions. Any custom template you build will count towards your Automation action limit. Even if the template only includes Integration blocks, any actions resulting from triggering the template will count towards your Automation action limit.

What happens if I exceed my actions?

Automation and Integration limits

Every account has an action limit for Automation and Integrations. These limits are determined by the pricing plan tier. That limit refreshes monthly. To give you an idea of how it works:

On the Standard plan

In general, when you build an Automation, any actions used will count towards your Automation limit. When you build an Integration, any actions used will count towards your Integration limit.

However, when you build a custom template that includes both Automation and Integration blocks, the actions in that template will count towards your Automation limit. 

This is true regardless of what blocks your template includes. This is also true for monday apps: actions that are consumed in relation to any monday app will count towards your Automation limit.

When you exceed your limit

As mentioned, Standard accounts receive 250 actions per month. You will be notified about the usage limit as follows:

The first time you reach the 250 quota:

You will receive an email notification informing you of the enforcement change. The enforcement will not be applied yet. Your actions debt will roll over to the next cycle.

The second time you reach the quota:

The Billing Contacts will receive an email notification and a board banner when you've reached the 50% action limit and again at the 80% action limit.

When reaching the 100% full quota limit, you will receive a grace period of 72 hours before your automation runs will be paused. For your automations to keep running, you can either upgrade your plan and receive more actions or you can wait until the quota renews for the next cycle.

Note: If your account reaches the point that all of your current month’s actions have been used, the account will be blocked from editing or adding new Automations/Integrations.

It is possible to use so many actions that you consume all of the current month's limit and the following month's as well. This means that it's possible to begin a month with 0 actions available. 

In that case, you would not be able to work with automations for the entire month. In this situation, we recommend upgrading your account to the next tier.

To learn more about which plan is right for you, check out our Automation and Integration Pricing article.

Note: The "You've used X% of your monthly actions" banner cannot be dismissed or hidden. It will disappear once your actions reset at the start of your billing cycle, or if you upgrade to a higher plan.

Track and control actions

The Billing Contacts will receive an email when the account is approaching its action limit. However, you can monitor the number of actions your account is using at any time.

To do so, navigate to the Autopilot hub and then click on the Usage tab on the left hand menu. There you'll be able to toggle between your Automations and Integrations usage and track how many have been used and how many are still available for the month.

You can also update your plan directly from this page.

Actions and pricing

Can I buy actions?

At the moment, only Enterprise customers can purchase additional actions for their account. If you are on an Enterprise plan, please reach out to your monday.com contact to discuss this.

If you aren't on an Enterprise plan, the only actions available to your account are the ones that are included when you purchase your plan.

Can I pay to have my actions reactivated?

What to do when you reach your action limit

If you have reached your action limit, here is what you can do:

1.  Check what is consuming your actions: Open the Autopilot hub and click the Usage tab on the left to see a breakdown of Automation and Integration usage. Alternatively, navigate to Administration > Usage stats to view top consumers across your account, including top automations, top boards, and top creators.
2.  Reduce your usage: Review your top-consuming automations and consider disabling or deleting any that are no longer needed or running at unexpectedly high volumes.
3.  Wait for the monthly reset: Your action limit resets at the start of each monthly billing cycle. If you are close to the reset date, waiting may be the simplest option.
4.  Upgrade your plan: To increase your action limit, upgrade to a higher plan. You can do this directly from the Autopilot hub Usage tab. Enterprise customers can also purchase additional actions by contacting their monday.com account contact.

Note: Reached your limit sooner than expected? Apps installed from the marketplace may create automations or integrations that consume actions in the background. Open the Autopilot hub and click the Usage tab to see all sources of action consumption, including any app-generated automations.