Plan compliance

What happens when a setup is not compliant?

The strategy opens as usual and its results are veiled rather than taken away: the page keeps its shape, every number is hidden, and one panel sits over it. You are not redirected and nothing is reported as an error, because neither is true: the strategy is exactly where you left it. The panel names your plan, says which of the two reasons applies, and offers the way out that fits that reason.

• The account holds more strategies than the plan keeps active. The panel reads Set aside, not deleted, then names the plan, the number it keeps active — 1, on Free — and the number you hold, closing with "It becomes active again when the plan covers it." There is no free action under it, because none exists: what remains is the named step, Switch to Starter, and no button at all where no plan would cover the account as it stands. The one exception is a genuinely vacant seat — see below.
• The strategy on its own asks for more than the plan grants. The panel reads It asks for more than the plan allows and lists every limit it exceeds with the arithmetic beside it — positions · Model 1 · 40 · the plan allows 5, or filters per screener · Model 1 · Momentum · 15 · the plan allows 10, where Model 1 is the model the setting sits on and Momentum is the attached screener's own name — then Correct these values in Settings and it becomes active straight away, without changing plan. Its action is Correct the settings, and it is the loud button: correcting them costs nothing, and nobody should have to pay to leave a limit their own strategy crossed.

Where a higher plan would cover the strategy, Switch to Advanced sits beside it as the quieter second choice. Where no higher plan covers it, that button is absent rather than pointing at nothing.

The refusal is not only in the interface. The same verdict is applied when the results, the positions, or the what-to-buy list are requested directly, so nothing computes a number for a strategy the plan does not cover. Pressing Backtest answers with a sentence that names the plan you are on and the plan that would lift the refusal — for an account on Free that a strategy has outgrown, This strategy is outside your Free plan, so it cannot run. Switch to Advanced to run it. Where no plan covers the strategy as it stands, the same message ends No plan currently covers it — reduce what it holds and try again. instead.

Its settings stay open and editable. That is deliberate: editing is how a strategy that exceeds the plan on its own is corrected, and a save that brings it back inside the plan reopens it — the panel says so, Correct these values in Settings and it becomes active straight away, without changing plan.

Two accounts on different plans therefore get different answers to the same strategy: each simulation is judged against the plan of the account that asked for it. Nothing is deleted and nothing is edited. A strategy outside your plan stays in your library exactly as you left it, and it becomes runnable again the moment the plan covers it.

Which two things put a strategy outside a plan?

Two, and they clear differently.

• Your account holds more strategies than the plan allows, and this one is not among the ones kept active. Fincanva chooses which stay active rather than leaving it to chance: the strategies you follow Live first, then the most recently used. The rest read Set aside. This clears by moving to a plan that covers what you hold; the active set itself is decided once and does not shift on its own afterwards.

• The strategy on its own asks for more than the plan grants — more positions, more strategies inside a Combined, more attached screeners, or more filters inside one attached screener than your plan allows. This clears either by moving to a plan that covers it, or by editing the strategy back inside the limit. Which strategies your plan keeps active has no bearing on it: the problem is the strategy's own settings, so only the settings or the plan can resolve it. A component marked as switched off — which some strategies carried over from the previous Fincanva platform carry — does not count toward how many strategies a Combined may hold: only the ones in use do, as on the previous platform. Its own settings (positions, attached screeners, risk conditions, allocation method) are still held to the plan, in a Combined or in a single strategy, because they are still part of what the strategy contains. Switched off, it is left out of what a run uses. Whatever is switched on or off, a strategy holds at most as many components as the highest plan allows.

  Filters inside an attached screener are the one limit no plan raises. Every plan allows the same number of filters in a screener, so there is no higher step to move to and the panel offers none: the only way out is to remove filters from the attachment, or to detach it. The panel names the attachment on its line when it has a name, because one strategy can hold several and each carries its own filters: without the name, two attachments over the same allowance print the same line twice and neither says which one to trim. A screener you built inline in Asset selection has no name until you save it to your library or attach one from there, so its line stops at the model — filters per screener · Model 1 — where an attached one adds the screener's name after it. A strategy can cross it without you editing anything and without your plan changing — attaching a screener copies it into the strategy, and if the allowance itself moves afterwards the copy is over it where it stands. The other limits can be crossed without an edit too, but by moving to a plan that grants less.

  A screener in your library that is already at the allowance will not take another filter: Add filter opens and refuses, with the number you are at beside it. Narrowing the universe — country, sector, exchange — stays available in that same menu, because it is filters that are counted and not the universe; where there is no universe to narrow, as in a hand-picked basket, the button itself is off. You meet the limit where you are standing rather than at the save, nothing is trimmed in silence, and no plan is offered to switch to — because for this limit there is none.

  Inside a strategy, which of the two you meet depends on where the screener came from. One you built inline in Asset selection has no screener behind it, so it refuses at the button, as a library one does. The number it stops you at need not be the same, though: headroom a strategy carries over the allowance — because the allowance changed under it — belongs to the strategy rather than to one screener inside it, so another screener you built inline that is already using it leaves none here. One attached from your library keeps the rule for any filter that is new — what the strategy's copy may still take on is a filter the screener it came from already has, because that one exists whether you add it here or detach and attach the screener again — and there the refusal comes at the save rather than at the button, because whether a filter you are adding is one that screener still holds is something only Fincanva can see, and it is checked when you save. One that is already over the allowance — because the allowance changed under it — is left as it is rather than pruned, and stays editable in the direction that helps.

  The ceiling is what already exists, and it only comes down. A strategy carrying an attached screener with 12 filters may keep it at 12 and save it unchanged; bring the strategy's copy down to 11 and the twelfth is still available to it for as long as the screener in your library still holds it — add it back in place and the save is taken, because that filter still exists behind the strategy. You do not have to detach and attach again to get it; re-attaching is simply the other way of asking for the same rows. What is gone is a filter the library screener no longer holds either: then 11 is the ceiling, and it only comes down from there. Nothing can be saved above what is already there, in the strategy or in the library behind it.

  Already there counts the screener in your library as well as the strategy: a screener left at 12 by a change in the allowance can still be attached — to the strategies you already have and to new ones — because attaching moves filters that already exist rather than writing new ones. What you cannot do is change them on the way in: the filters that arrive have to be the ones that screener holds, so a thirteenth is refused, and so is naming a 12-filter screener while sending twelve different filters.

Both cases give the strategy the status Set aside, and in your library its row stays a row: it carries a small lock before the name, the name is muted, and the computed metrics show dashes instead of numbers, because there are no numbers to show. Set-aside rows sink to the bottom of the list whatever sort you chose.

Which of the two reasons applies is in the lock's tooltip, not in a sentence across the row. For the count case it names the ceiling and the plan — on Free, a ceiling of 1 saved strategy. For a strategy that exceeds the plan on its own it is arithmetic — 40 positions, the plan allows 5 — because the correction is a number you have to hit yourself. Under both, the same closing line: Nothing has been deleted — it becomes active again when the plan covers it.

A set-aside row keeps its Live switch, shown off and dimmed, and pressing it toggles nothing: it opens The plan is full, which says how many the plan goes up to — 1, on Free — that they are all taken, and that nothing is deleted because the next step raises the number. It closes with Got it, or takes you to the higher plan with Switch to Starter. An account cannot follow more strategies than its plan keeps active, and a switch that simply refused the click would leave you with no way to learn why.

How does Fincanva decide which strategies stay active?

Fincanva decides it, once, at the moment your plan stops covering your library: the strategies you follow Live first, then the most recently used. Those stay active; the rest read Set aside. The notice at the head of the list states the rule rather than leaving you to guess: We kept the ones you follow, then the ones you used most recently. Nothing has been deleted.

The decision is written down, and it does not move again. Once the set is settled, ordinary use no longer changes it — editing an old strategy does not pull it back in, and does not push another one out. It is decided afresh only when your plan covers your whole library again: at that point the whole verdict is discarded, nothing is set aside, and a later change of plan is judged on the library as it is then rather than on a set decided months earlier.

Nothing is deleted by any of it. A set-aside strategy keeps everything it had, its settings stay editable, and it comes back exactly as it was as soon as the plan covers it. Because the strategies you follow Live rank first, one of them is set aside only when you follow more strategies than your plan keeps active; a set-aside strategy stops being followed, and then declares that gap for good — see Mark Live.

There is one moment where you choose instead. If you delete a strategy that was active, your plan has room for one more — and that is the only way a seat ever falls vacant, since nothing else here deletes. From then on, every set-aside strategy that could actually reopen carries Activate this one on its own lock panel. One that exceeds the plan on its own does not: taking the seat would not change its settings.

Nothing appears on its own, and no control sits somewhere waiting to be found: with no vacant seat, that button does not exist. You reach it when you decide to, on the row you mean. If you never press it, the same rule fills the seat the next time you open Fincanva. And the price does not move: a seat exists only because something was deleted for good, so changing which strategy is active still costs a strategy.

Where do you see how much of your plan you are using?

In the plan tile, in the sidebar above your account: the only place the count lives at rest. A plan is a property of the account, not of the list you happen to be looking at, so the number no longer appears beside a library's title. The tile always shows your plan's name and grows only when it has to — one row per library as you approach what the plan grants, lit in the plan's tint once you are past it, with how many items are set aside.

Pressing it opens a panel covering both libraries, strategies and screeners, each with its own usage and a bar — on Free, 1 / 1 for saved strategies and 25 / 999 for saved screeners, which no plan limits. Where a library is over, the panel states underneath the rule Fincanva applied — 2 set aside — the ones you follow stay active, then the most recent. Under that it repeats the reassurance the rest of the app only implies: Nothing has been deleted. Strategies that are set aside become active again when the plan covers them.

The panel closes with Switch to Starter where a higher plan exists, and Manage plan, at the top, opens billing settings. It offers no other way back, because there is none: re-choosing which strategies the plan keeps active is not a feature of Fincanva.

What Fincanva enforces today

The refusal holds when a strategy the plan does not cover is opened, when its results are requested, and when a run is asked for — and, as of a later fix, at creation and at save too. You may never create beyond the plan. Making a new strategy, duplicating one, copying one from the public library, cloning it, or combining strategies into a Combined all ask the plan first and are refused outright when what they would produce is not covered — copying counts as creating, so a Free account can no longer pull an Ultimate-tier public strategy into a full library. Combining strategies at all is gated the same way: Combined is not available below Advanced, and a press there is refused before anything is created. That gate does not exempt an Advanced-or-above account from the count refusal above — the Combined tile itself stays visible and clickable regardless of plan, and a Combined that would push you past what your plan grants is refused the same way any other creation is, with its own sentence, Couldn't create the combined strategy.

A creation refused on the count answers with its own sentence, not the run one, and that sentence names the copy — at every door that copies, with no exceptions left. Duplicate in a dashboard row's menu, Duplicate in the header of an open strategy, Duplicate in the strategies explorer's own row menu, Copy to Mine in the first two of those, and the copy button on a Public strategy in the explorer all read — on a Free account whose library already holds as many strategies as the plan allows — This would take you past what your Free plan allows, so the copy wasn't created. Switch to Starter for more. It says the copy wasn't created rather than it cannot run because nothing was created: whatever you were duplicating from is untouched. The explorer's row menu used to word this one as a refused save; it no longer does, and no copy door anywhere does.

A duplicate refused for what the strategy is, rather than for how many you hold, is a different message — and which one you read depends on where you pressed. Cloning a Combined on a plan that does not offer Combined is refused before anything is created, in every case. From a dashboard row's menu or an open strategy's header it answers short: Couldn't duplicate the strategy — no plan, no step, no number. From the explorer it answers This strategy is outside your Free plan, so it cannot run. Switch to Advanced to run it., which names the plan and the step but describes a run that was never going to happen — you asked for a copy. Nothing is created either way, and the strategy you copied from is untouched.

Copy to Mine has no such case where it is offered as Copy to Mine: in a dashboard row's menu and in an open strategy's header, your plan is read at that door for how many strategies you already hold and for whether the copy's benchmark is one your plan allows — both of which name the plan when they refuse — so a copy your plan stopped always tells you so. Couldn't copy the strategy is what you get when something other than your plan stopped it: the strategy is no longer public, or no longer there.

The copy button on a Public strategy in the explorer is the exception, and it is one because of how it copies. In the tree it is a copy icon carrying no words, announced to a screen reader as Copy "…" to Mine; the window it opens is titled and confirmed Duplicate, and it duplicates rather than copies — so the Combined check above applies to it and a Free account copying a public Combined reads the run sentence there too. On the count, it reads the copy sentence like every other door.

One door answers with a wall instead of that sentence: New strategy above the strategies library, on Mine, opens a dialog of its own rather than the creation dialog. It names the step that lifts the limit, states where you stand — You are at 1. Nothing is deleted — the next step raises the number. — adds Fincanva applies this limit itself, so the step above is the only way past it. and offers Switch to Starter. It is not the plan panel described above, which belongs to the sidebar tile. The same button on Public is not walled: that board lists strategies you do not own, so your plan is not read there and the click opens the creation dialog like any other door.

Every other way in refuses without naming the plan. New strategy on the portfolios page, the + in the sidebar, the + on the tab bar, the create button on an empty strategies board — which you can still meet on a full plan, because that board is filtered to one kind while the plan counts your whole library — and the create buttons on the dashboard and in the explorer all open the creation dialog as usual. You submit, the creation is refused on the count, and the message you get is Couldn't create your strategy. Try again. — it says nothing about your plan and nothing about the step out. Combining is the one leg of that dialog with a sentence of its own — Couldn't create the combined strategy — and it names the plan no more than the other does.

Ahead of the wall there is a warning rather than a second wall, and only ahead of it: from four-fifths of the ceiling onwards, the creation dialog carries a grey line under its title — It will be the 801st of 999 on the Starter plan — and it is absent both while you are still well inside the limit and once you have reached it. The plan it names is never Free. The only saved-strategy ceiling a plan sets is Free's 1, and no whole number is at once four-fifths of 1 and short of 1 — at 0 nothing is shown, at 1 the plan is already full — so on Free the wall arrives with no warning before it. The 999 the line counts against is the anti-abuse maximum, which no plan step raises, and not a plan number.

You may still find yourself beyond it, and saving stays the route back rather than a second wall. A save is refused only when it would make some breach worse than the one the strategy already had — more positions, more member strategies, or more attached screeners than before. A strategy a downgrade left over the plan keeps its settings editable and can be saved as many times as you like as long as no save increases what it exceeds by; the one save that is never refused is the one that brings a number down. Only once a save reduces every breach to nothing does the strategy stop reading Set aside.

One refusal at the run door names no plan at all. A few of the plan's limits are only read when a run is asked for, so a strategy can open normally — results in place, no panel, no Set aside on its row — and still be refused at the press: Backtest answers Couldn't start the run, without naming your plan and without offering a step, and nothing else on the page changes. On the walk the same refusal arrives as a panel instead of that message: Saved — the backtest did not start, which confirms your changes are saved and says the strategy is outside what your plan allows — again without naming the setting or a step. It clears the same two ways as any other plan refusal — move to a plan that covers the strategy, or bring the setting that asks too much back inside the plan — but Fincanva does not name that setting here, so what each plan includes is where you check what your step grants.

Set aside is one of the three statuses Fincanva reads from your own account rather than from the compute engine — the other two being Incomplete and To run — so it is true right now and does not change when the engine is unreachable. It is also the first question asked about a strategy: a strategy outside the plan reads Set aside even when it is unfinished, because finishing it would not make it runnable.

The same capability question seen from the data side is data-tier gating. This page describes the check itself: what each plan includes, and what it costs, is on what each plan includes.

Worked example

Two accounts open the same strategy, one holding 40 instruments. The account on a plan that grants it sees the results and presses Backtest: the run starts and the status settles on Up to date. The account on Free opens the same strategy and finds its results veiled — the page keeps its shape, the numbers gone — with one panel over it reading It asks for more than the plan allows, the arithmetic under it (positions · Model 1 · 40 · the plan allows 5) and Correct the settings beside Switch to Advanced. Pressing Backtest produces no run either: This strategy is outside your Free plan, so it cannot run. Switch to Advanced to run it. The strategy is not touched, nothing is removed from it, its settings are still editable, and the same press succeeds unchanged once the account is on a plan that covers it.

Recognising that shape matters, because it is the one case where an empty results view is neither a run that never happened nor data that has moved on — the two ordinary reasons covered by run status and data freshness.