Confused about ACE transcripts

[Merlin]

I’m confused and I can’t find anything clear in the posts. I finished the free Sophia and Institutes classes. I created an ACE account and added them into what I think is my transcript. I did not pay $20 yet and haven’t sent transcripts to a college. Did I do everything necessary to save my credits or do I need to pay $20 before the end of March to keep my Institutes credits?

You can accumulate credits on your ACE transcript for as long as you like without ever sending them anywhere. Unless you need to send a transcript early to qualify as a student or something, I usually recommend not sending a transcript until you're all done accumulating credits so you don't end up having to pay to send the transcript more than once since they charge you each time. That said, sometimes sending them early can be helpful, particularly in cases where evaluations change (i.e., an UL course could be downgraded to LL, so if you submit after the change, you lose out on the UL option; or a school could stop accepting credits from your provider, like what happened with TESU and Shmoop).

To "save your credits" all you do is log into your ACE account, search for the course you've completed, and add it to your transcript. It will prompt you for when it was completed, and you'll have to wait for confirmation from the provider (which usually takes up to a week, though usually a day or two in my experience). While waiting on the confirmation you will see the class listed as "Pending" in your course summary. Once it has been confirmed you will get an email stating as much and the course will then appear as completed in your course summary (no longer in the pending list). If for some reason they deny the course, it will be removed and you will have to contact the provider before re-submitting the course for confirmation again; denials usually occur because you either selected the wrong course, specified the wrong date, or the course isn't yet complete.

I don't know for sure how establishing an ACE account works now. When I set mine up, I believe it was free and you just paid each time you sent a transcript. It sounds like you now pay $20 initially (not sure when that gets paid) which includes 1 free transcript, and then you pay $15 for each additional transcript. If you're concerned you could always contact them directly, they have pretty good customer support.