To send texts, you need to purchase credits from your SMS provider. Each text you send, or each part of a long text, corresponds to one credit, and each credit costs a certain amount of money, generally a few pence. The cost varies from provider to provider, and depends on the "tariff", or payment scheme, that you are signed up to. Usually, you buy credits in bulk to start of with a certain balance, say £10 worth of credits, then as you send texts, your balance reduces. Sooner or later, you will top it up so as to be able to continue sending texts.

To find out what your balance is at any given time, you send a text to a particular number with certain words or characters in it. When your SMS provider receives such a text, one is automatically sent back giving details of your balance and any other relevant information, such as allowances. For example, to obtain your balance from T-Mobile, you send a text to 150 containing just the characters "ba".

You can set up a directory entry in WintextCom to send these kinds of texts automatically, rather than just storing the number and you having to select the number and type in the text yourself. When you select such an entry, the text is sent automatically and you just see the progress message on the display for a few seconds )"Sending SMS text: ...").

To create an automatic text:

Enter any descriptive text of your choice in the name field of the directory entry, for example, "Get credit balance".
In the information field, enter the number to send the text to.
After the number, type a greater than sign (">").
Follow the ">" with the required text of the message. If you need to include a new line, use "<13><10>".
Save the entry.

For example, the information field of the directory entry to ask for your balance from T-Mobile, as described above, is:

150>ba

Soon after sending the text, check for new texts and you should have one telling you your current balance.

You can use this method to set up automatic texts for all kinds of purposes, to interact with services that can provide information by text, such as banking information about your bank accounts. More advanced usage includes creating text templates that fill in a message but allow you to add your own text or edit it, and sending a text from a file.

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Getting your SMS Credit Balance