How AppleCare credits work in Apple Business Essentials
Repair incidence credits are used when a user has a device that requires AppleCare repair. The device-based plan gets 1 repair credit per subscription. The user-based plan gets 2 repair credits per plan.
Repair credits cover iPhone, iPad, and Mac models from 2017 or later. An incident can be either a repair or a replacement. A repair credit applies to one repair event and one repair event applies to one device serial number. AppleCare will cover broken screens and accidental damage type events. They won’t cover abuse or beyond economical repair situations.
If there are multiple issues with that single device (assuming none of it is abuse), then the device would be repaired. For example, a broken iPhone screen and battery were issues. If the technician found an issue with both, they would fix the screen and replace the battery and it would consume only one repair credit.
Repair credits for your organization are pooled. The entire pool will be available for any eligible device, and can be used more than one repair credit (if approved by an administrator). Repair credits have no direct association with the devices that are attached to the licenses. The pool of repair credits grows as the plan is assigned to additional users. Repair credits expire one year after the purchase of a particular subscription. They can’t be rolled over to the next year for a user, but new incidents will be issued to that user for the new year.
View credit history
In Apple Business Essentials, sign in with a user that has the role of Administrator.
Select Service & Support
in the sidebar, then select Service & Support Settings.View your current repair credits.
If necessary, select Show Repair Credit Schedule to view the current credit renewal information.
Repair incident lifecycle
After the first subscription is assigned to a user, the pool of incidents is shown in Apple Business Essentials. When an incident occurs, an administrator with the correct privileges must approve the repair using an incident or they can elect to use a paid repair instead. If the administrator approves the repair from the incident pool, the oldest credit is used first.
Every time a user is removed from a subscription, the repair credit that subscription added to the pool is removed from the pool. For implementation, the repair credit removed aligns with the day that user contributed to the pool (for example, oldest or newest credits aren’t removed, but rather a credit that represents the duration of the user’s subscription). If that repair credit has already been used, the repair credit with the closest contribution date is removed.
For example, this might be your organization’s repair credit history:
Date | Action | Credits earned | Credits consumed | Credits expired | Total | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1/1/2022 | Administrator assigns 5 licenses | 5 |
|
| 5 | Added |
6/1/2022 | Administrator assigns 1 license | 1 |
|
| 6 | Added |
12/24/2022 | All devices repaired using credits |
| 6 |
| 0 | Used |
12/25/2022 | User leaves an organization and cancels license (January 1 Pool) |
|
| 1 | 0 | Can’t carry negative balance so credits stay at zero |
12/26/2022 | Repair approved and completed |
|
|
| 0 | Repair paid. Not using credit |
1/1/2023 | Annual credit renewal | 4 |
|
| 4 | Added |
6/1/2023 | Annual credit renewal | 1 |
|
| 5 | Added |
Credit history
Initial credit history contains two monthly values:
Amount: This column represents the total number of credits available on the renewal date. This includes credits that were were added to the credit pool per month through the purchase of a subscription.
Used: This column represents how many credits were used per month.
For example, the administrator can view the following when inspecting their repair credits:
Renewal Date | Amount | Used |
|---|---|---|
2/1/2022 | 10 | 0 |
3/1/2022 | 0 | 1 |
4/1/2022 | 9 | 0 |
5/1/2022 | 9 | 0 |
6/1/2022 | 9 | 0 |
7/1/2022 | 9 | 1 |
8/1/2022 | 8 | 0 |
9/1/2022 (two credits added) | 10 | 0 |
10/1/2022 | 10 | 1 |
11/1/2022 | 9 | 0 |
12/1/2022 | 9 | 2 |
1/1/2023 | 7 | 1 |
2/1/2023 | 6 | 0 |
Your credit history can also show additional values.
Issued: This column represents how many credits were added to the credit pool per month through a purchase of a subscription.
Renewed: This column represents how many expired credits were renewed annually. This number maybe be lower than that of the initial purchase if there are less renewed subscriptions.
Used or Removed: This column represents how many credits were used per month. Credits maybe also be removed when a subscription is canceled.
Balance: This column represents the total number of credits available at the end of the month.
For example, the administrator can view the following when inspecting their repair credits in March of the following year. Unlike the implementation detail, the used column will represent the credits used that month, not the credit that was taken from the pool.
Month | Issued | Renewed | Used or removed | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2/1/2022 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
3/1/2022 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 9 |
4/1/2022 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 11 |
5/1/2022 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 11 |
6/1/2022 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 11 |
7/1/2022 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 9 |
8/1/2022 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 19 |
9/1/2022 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 16 |
10/1/2022 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 12 |
11/1/2022 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 12 |
12/1/2022 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 15 |
1/1/2023 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 14 |
2/1/2023 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 14 |