Quotas let you split a test's recruiting goal into defined audience segments, so the test fills with the mix of testers you need instead of anyone in your wider targeting range.
Example without Quotas:
If you define your targeting criteria to include participants from the UK and USA, without quotas you are guaranteed that the participants live in the US or UK, but it's possible that you could get 90% of your testers in the USA.
Example with Quotas:
With Quotas, you explicitly define quota groups:
Quota 1: 25 people in the USA
Quota 2: 25 people in the UK
Recruiting is steered toward the groups that still need people, each applicant is sorted into a group as they apply, and you can watch every group fill from the Testers pages.
With quotas, you set the targets once, before launch, and the platform does the balancing: invites go out in proportion to what each group still needs, a full group stops taking new applicants, and anyone who does not fit an open group is kept on your Pending list rather than turned away.
The result is a sample you can defend when you write up the findings, with far less manual accepting and rejecting during recruiting.
Enterprise Feature: Quotas are a plan feature and may not be available on your account. If you do not see the Quota management question on the Tester Recruiting step, they are not included in your current plan.
How quotas work
Three rules explain almost everything you will see.
Every accepted tester belongs to at most one group. Groups are an ordered list, and an applicant is placed in the first group from the top whose conditions they meet and that still has room. Order matters: if "Women" sits above "Under 30", a 25 year old woman counts as a woman, not as a young person.
Quotas never reject anyone. A qualified applicant who only matches full groups, or who matches no group at all, goes to your Pending list, not to Rejected, and you can accept them by hand at any time.
Group targets add up to your recruiting goal. A test recruiting 50 testers needs groups whose targets total exactly 50 before it can launch, and the platform keeps that true afterwards.
How to turn on quotas for a test
Open your draft test and go to the Tester Recruiting step.
Below "How many testers would you like to recruit?", find the Quota management question.
Select Define specific quotas based on target criteria.
A Quotas step now appears in the left navigation menu after Screening.
To turn quotas off on a draft, select Quotas are not required. The Quotas step disappears from the menu, and any groups you already built are kept in case you turn quotas back on before launch.
How to build quota groups
The Quotas step opens with the line "Set targets for how many of your 50 testers should come from each group", using your own recruiting goal, above a table of groups with Group, Conditions, and Target columns.
Creating a new Quota Group
Click Add quota group. A new row appears with a Group name field, and the row reminds you to "Add at least one condition and a target to save this group."
Type a name for the group. Names must be unique within the test, so pick something you will recognize on the Testers pages later, such as "Android · 35+".
Click condition in the Conditions column to open the condition picker. Choose an attribute on the left, tick the values you want on the right, and click Add condition. Repeat to add more conditions to the same group.
Enter the number of testers you want in the Target column.
Repeat for each group. The line next to Add quota group tracks your allocation, for example 50 of 50 testers allocated.
Groups save automatically. A row is saved as soon as it has a name, at least one condition, and a target of 1 or more. If a save fails, the reason appears under the row.
Conditions you can use
The picker groups attributes under Devices, Demographics, and, on tests that recruit from your community, Custom profile fields. Type in Search attributes to find one quickly.
Device is the platform the tester applies with. It is only offered on tests that collect device information, and only lists the platforms the test recruits for. If you have not chosen your devices yet, the picker explains that any platform can be used and that the group will be narrowed to your chosen platforms once you pick them on the Tester Recruiting step.
Age is a range with From age and To age fields, and it must sit inside the ages the test targets. The picker warns you that testers whose age is unknown will not match the group.
Gender and Country offer the values the test targets. Countries are a searchable list; each country you pick becomes a token in the field.
Custom profile fields lists your company's multiple choice profile fields and their options. These only apply to tests recruiting from your community, because panel testers never answer another company's profile questions.
Within one condition, any of the selected values counts as a match, so "Device: iPhone, Android" means either platform. Across conditions, all of them must hold, so a group with "Device: iPhone" and "Age: 18 to 34" only takes testers who satisfy both. Testers whose age, gender, or country is not on their profile never match a condition on that attribute; they can still land in a group that does not use it, or on your Pending list.
Editing, reordering, and deleting groups
Click an existing condition chip to change its values, then click Update condition. Use Remove condition in the picker, or the small x on the chip, to drop it.
Drag a group by the handle on its left to change the order. Because testers join the first matching group from the top, put your most specific groups first.
Click the x at the right of a row to delete a group.
Hover the Quotas page title for a short reminder of these rules, or click Learn how quotas work beside it to come back to this article.
Launching with quotas
The allocation line must be green before you can launch. When targets total more than your goal it turns red and reads, for example, 60 of 50 testers allocated. Lower your targets by 10 or raise your recruiting goal. When they total less it asks you to raise your targets or lower the goal instead.
Launch is blocked while quotas are on but no groups exist, while the targets do not add up to your recruiting goal, or while a group has no matching testers at all in the audience you are recruiting from. A group that has some matching testers but fewer than its target shows a warning and does not block the launch. Groups with a warning icon next to their name have lost their conditions or point at a deleted profile field, and match nobody until you fix them.
The Launch step lists every group and target in a Quota groups row, with an Edit quotas link if anything needs to change.
What happens when someone applies
Applicants fill in your screening questions exactly as they do on any other test, and tests that collect device information still validate the platform first. Once their answers are saved, the platform works out their group. Device is judged on the platform they actually applied with, never on what they say they own.
A tester who matches a group with room is accepted into that group, or, on tests where you review applicants yourself, held for your review with the group they would land in already recorded.
A tester who only matches full groups is placed on Pending. Their first matching group is remembered, so you can find them from that group later.
A tester who matches no group is placed on Pending with no group.
On tests that collect device information, a tester who would land in a full group on one platform but an open group on another is steered to the open one before they apply. Pending testers see the message All spots matching your profile are currently filled. You're on the pending list and may be accepted if a spot opens. They are never told which group they were sorted into.
If your groups are still empty when a test is live, quotas do nothing, and applications flow exactly as on a test without them.
How recruiting is paced toward your groups
On tests that invite testers from the BetaTesting panel or from your community, each round of invites is split across the groups that still need testers, in proportion to how far short each one is, and only goes to people who could actually fill that group. Full groups receive no invites. Tests that recruit through your own link or email list get the same enforcement and monitoring, but there is nothing to pace.
Need is measured in accepted testers. Applicants sitting on Pending do not reduce a group's need, so a group that is 10 short keeps recruiting 10 more even if 20 people are waiting on Pending for it. If you want those waiting applicants in the test, accept them by hand.
When a group still needs testers but nobody left in the audience matches it, it is marked no more testers to invite in the quota progress panel and its share of invites goes to the other groups. After the invite process has come up empty for that group several times in a row, your test admins receive one email, "There are no further testers matching the quota group ... that we can invite right now", with a Review quota groups button. Testers already invited can still accept, so the group may keep filling; to reach more people, widen its conditions or move some of its target to another group. The mark clears on its own as soon as matching testers appear.
Tracking quotas during the test
Open Testers on a live test. A Quotas pill sits in the tab row of the Tester Status, Recruiting Results, and Recruiting Settings tabs, with a small progress bar and the overall count, such as 41/50.
Click the pill to open Quota progress. The headline sums it up, for example 41 of 50 filled · 1 group full · 4 pending in groups, and each group gets its own bar split into Complete, Active, and Open spots, with a label like 21 of 25, 15 of 15 · full, or 5 of 10 · 4 pending.
Click Filter on a group to jump to Recruiting Results showing only that group's testers, or Quota setup to go back to the Quotas step.
On Recruiting Results, the Quota group column shows each applicant's group as a chip. A pending applicant whose group is full shows Group Full before the group name, and one who fits no group shows No matching quota group.
Use the Quota group filter above the table to see one group at a time. The filter is kept in the page URL, so you can share the view, and it can be saved with your other filters.
Tester exports from a quota test include a Quota group column automatically, right after the applicant status.
Accepting pending applicants by hand
You are never blocked by your own quotas. Accepting a pending applicant whose group is full simply overfills that group, so it might read 16 of 15 afterwards. Accepting someone who matches no group adds them with no group; they count toward the overall recruiting goal only.
On Recruiting Results, tick the applicants you want and click Accept to Test.
Read the confirmation. On a quota test it warns Accepting these testers will put one or more quota groups over their target and lists each affected group with its new count, and it tells you how many selected testers do not match a quota group.
Confirm to accept. Accepting past your recruiting goal raises the goal, as it does on any test.
Changing quotas after launch
You can keep editing groups on a live test from the Quotas step, within a few limits that protect the testers already in it.
Targets can be raised or lowered, but not below the number already accepted into that group, and the total still has to fit your recruiting goal. A target that would break either rule is refused with an explanation.
Reordering groups only affects where future applicants land. Nobody who has already been placed is moved.
A group that holds accepted testers cannot be deleted while the test is live. Deleting a group that has none re-sorts its pending applicants into the remaining groups straight away, and on tests that accept automatically, anyone who now fits an open group is accepted.
When you use Add More Testers on Test Home, the dialog asks you to Split the new recruiting goal across your quota groups. Each group shows its current target and a field for the new one, the extra spots are shared out in proportion by default, and you can edit the split before you click Add testers. No group can go below its current target.
Editing the test's platforms removes device conditions for platforms the test no longer offers. A group left with no conditions matches nobody and is flagged on the Quotas step until you fix it.
Turning quotas off on a live test
Quotas are a setup decision. You can switch a live test to Quotas are not required on the Recruiting Settings tab, after confirming in the Disable quotas for this test? dialog, but you cannot turn them back on once a test has launched, and the option is disabled with the note Quotas can only be set up before a test is launched. After you disable them, groups stop applying and invites are no longer paced toward them, accepted testers keep their spot, and applicants waiting on Pending stay there for you to accept manually. To use quotas on a live test that has them off, set them up on a new or duplicated test before it launches.
Things to know
A test can have up to 20 quota groups, and each group needs a name that no other group in the test uses.
Duplicating a test copies its quota groups. Conditions that cannot apply to the copy, such as a platform it does not recruit for or a profile field from another company, are dropped, and if no group survives, quotas are switched off on the copy.
On tests where you review every applicant yourself, everyone still lands on Pending for your review. The group each applicant would join is recorded and shown in the Quota group column so you can balance your accepts.
Two testers applying for the last spot in a group at the same moment can both be accepted, in which case the group ends up one over its target and simply stops receiving invites.
If a tester's group could not be worked out when they applied, their application is kept on Pending and checked again automatically a little later, so nothing is lost.
Conditions on screening answers, income, and education are not available yet, and pending applicants are never accepted automatically when a spot opens; accepting them is always your call.