Move Creative Units between parent and child workspaces

Last updated: October 11, 2026

Move Creative Units (CUs) from your studio's parent workspace to a child workspace, or back up to the parent, so each team or project works from its own balance while billing stays in one place.

Before you start

  • Your workspace needs workspace hierarchy, which Layer switches on for a studio. If you want a parent workspace with child workspaces under it, contact the Layer team. Parent and child workspaces explains how they fit together.

  • You need billing access in the workspace you send from. Without it, or without a parent or child workspace to send to, Transfer Creative Units does not appear.

  • To add a child workspace, open the workspace menu at the bottom of the sidebar from the parent, choose Create New Workspace, and tick Create as child workspace of the parent.

Steps

  1. In the workspace that holds the units, click your workspace name at the bottom of the sidebar, choose Workspace Settings, then Usage. Transfer Creative Units sits under Available Creative Units.

  2. Open Destination workspace and choose where the units go. The list holds this workspace's direct children and, if it has one, its parent (marked (parent)).

  3. Enter the number of Creative Units to send in Amount.

  4. Select Transfer units, check the workspace and amount in Transfer creative units?, and confirm. A transfer cannot be undone; to move units back, make a transfer the other way.

Result

The units leave this workspace's balance and land in the destination's. Available Creative Units shows Updating balance... for a moment, then the new figure. Transfer History lists each transfer as Sent to or Received from a workspace, with its date and amount, on both workspaces' Usage pages. Transferred units keep the expiry and rollover of the purchase they came from, so a transfer neither extends nor resets them.

Production tips

  • Fund teams per milestone. Send each child workspace what its next sprint or content drop needs, rather than one large transfer, so a team that overruns asks for more instead of quietly eating another team's budget.

  • Check balances across the studio. On the parent's Usage page, open Child workspace balances to see every child's balance and spend for the period before you decide who gets units.

  • Pull back what a finished project did not use. From the child workspace, choose the parent in Destination workspace and send the remainder back. Do this before a child workspace is deleted: units left in it do not return to the parent on their own.

  • Report across the hierarchy. Export CSV on the parent's Usage page can cover All workspaces, for one spreadsheet of the whole studio's spend.

  • Cap people, not just workspaces. Inside a workspace, a group usage limit stops one team from spending the whole balance. A group kept in the parent can be assigned to a child, where its limit caps the team's spending.

If something goes wrong

  • Transfer Creative Units is not on the Usage page. The workspace does not have hierarchy switched on, it has no parent or child to send to, or your role lacks billing access. Ask a workspace admin, or contact support about hierarchy.

  • "Your workspace does not have sufficient units." The amount is more than the workspace's available balance. Send less, or add units first.

  • "Amount must be a whole number." Transfers move whole Creative Units only.

  • A grandchild workspace is not in the list. Transfers go one level at a time. Send to its parent, then transfer onward from there.

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