04 · Notifications

Three ways of being told something needs you: in the app, in the daily email, and on your phone. This chapter explains what each one carries, who decides, and how to set your own.

1. Counts and events, and why they behave differently

Everything the app tells you is one of two kinds, and the difference explains almost everything else on this page.

A count is something still true right now. 3 bookings to approve. 2 overdue invoices. You do not need it kept for you, because the work itself is the record: finish it and the number falls to zero on its own.

An event is something that happened and is then over. A safety check logged as failed at 6am. A customer cancelling overnight. A member's card declined. Deal with the freezer at 7am and the count of open issues is back to zero, so if nobody wrote the event down, the owner arriving at 9 would never learn it happened at all.

Counts live in the bell and on your dashboard. Events are kept in Notifications until you have read them, and they are the only things that can reach your phone, because they are the only ones with a moment to buzz at.

2. The bell

The bell in the top bar shows a live count and lists what is waiting. It is meant to reach zero: it carries things somebody is waiting on you for.

Standing backlogs are deliberately not in the bell. Money owed, stock to reorder, a licence expiring: those never reach zero, and a red dot that never clears teaches people to stop looking at red dots. They live on the dashboard's attention card instead, and the preferences screen tells you which ones those are.

Select See all in the bell to open Notifications.

3. The Notifications page

Everything that has happened and you have not cleared, newest first. Opening the page clears the bell, the way an inbox does, but each line keeps the New chip it arrived with, so the thing you came to look at does not vanish as you look at it.

Select a line to go to whatever it is about. Select ✕ to clear one, or Clear them all to clear the lot.

These are the things kept here:

The last three are yours, not the business's: they are about your own work, so you get them whatever your role is, and no manager permission is needed.

Cleared notifications are removed permanently after 90 days.

4. Choosing what you are told, and how

Your own, on My work

My work → What you get told about.

One row per notification, grouped by area, with a switch per channel:

• In the app, which governs the bell and the dashboard together. Which of the two a line lands in is a property of the line, not a choice.
• Daily email, whether it joins your morning summary.
• On my phone, whether it buzzes a device you have switched on in section 5. This column only appears once your workspace has notifications set up, and only on your own screen: see section 5 for why nobody else can set it.

Some rows have no switch in a column, and say why instead of offering a control that would do nothing:

• Straight away, already emailed the moment it happens, so repeating it in the morning would be the same news twice.
• Not emailed, a figure the dashboard works out for its own cards, with no email behind it.
• Ongoing, a running count rather than something that happens at a moment, so there is nothing for a phone to buzz at. See section 1.

A phone is never the last thing standing. A browser can throw its own notifications away without telling anybody, so a line marked 🔒 can't be silenced keeps the app and the email holding the floor between them; the phone is always yours to switch off.

Your choice always wins over the business default. An owner changing the default later does not undo what you have set.

The business default, per role

Settings → Notifications (needs Manage settings).

Pick a role from the dropdown and set what somebody in that role is told out of the box. This is a starting point, not a rule: anyone can then change their own. It is keyed to your own roles, so a cafe that invents a "Head Chef" gets a notification profile for it without anybody touching code.

Some lines start on for one role and off for another. Anything about money is the obvious case: booking balances charged and booking balances failed to charge arrive for owners and managers out of the box and are off for everyone else, including any role you invent later. Every one of them is still a switch, so you can turn a money line on for a supervisor, or off for yourself, and your choice is what sticks.

Money that was, or was not, taken

If the app charges a balance to a saved card automatically, two lines can tell you about it:

A failed charge leaves the balance as unpaid, so the booking still shows the money as owing and it can be collected another way. Only a charge that actually settles marks a balance paid.

Two things a preference can never do

1. Show you something you are not allowed to see. You are never told about a page your role cannot open. That is access, not a preference, and no setting lifts it.
2. Silence an alarm. A few lines are marked 🔒 can't be silenced. You can move one between the app and email; you cannot send it nowhere. A freezer logged at 19°C is exactly the thing that must not be switchable off six months before it matters.

5. On your phone

My work → On your phone.

A notification on your phone with the app closed. It carries the events only, for the reason in section 1.

This one is yours alone. The business sets a starting point for the bell and the morning email, because those are its own surfaces. Nobody's employer decides what makes their phone buzz on a day off, so there is no business-wide switch for this and no way for anyone else to turn it on for you.

It is also per device. A phone and a tablet are switched on separately and listed separately, so an old phone you no longer use can be removed on its own. Ten devices are kept per person; switch on an eleventh and the one you have not used for longest drops off the list by itself.

Which notifications reach it is then set per line in section 4's On my phone column. Switching a device on here is the doorway; that column is the detail.

Switching it on

On an iPhone or iPad, notifications only work once the app is on your home screen; Apple does not offer them to a website in a Safari tab.

1. Open your workspace in Safari and sign in.
2. Tap Share, then Add to Home Screen, then Add.
3. Open the app from the new home screen icon (not from Safari again).
4. My work → On your phone → Turn on for this device, then Allow.

On Android, Windows or a Mac, no install is needed: My work → On your phone → Turn on for this device, then allow the browser's prompt.

Then use Send me a test. Push is the one channel where "it is switched on" and "it actually arrives" are different claims, so there is a way to find out rather than assume.

What arrives

Only an alarm is allowed to make a sound or vibrate. Everything else arrives quietly, because an app that buzzes a pocket over an unpaid invoice gets its notifications switched off entirely, and the freezer alarm goes with them.

Tapping a notification opens the app at whatever it is about.

If the card is not there, or the button is missing

The card works out what it is looking at and gives you the steps for that device, so you should not need this table. It is here for completeness.

Privacy

The notification itself is encrypted to your device. Google and Apple carry the message without being able to read it, and the keys it is encrypted to are never readable by anyone, including you, once your browser has handed them over. Removing a device stops it immediately.

6. Permissions

There is no permission for notifications. What you are told follows the permissions you already hold, and the Notifications page shows only the lines written for you, so it needs no gate of its own: a manager cannot read a colleague's alarms there.

Related: Dashboard & navigation · Reminders & digests · Safety & cleaning · Roles & permissions