The Alerts page is the one place to see everything that's currently demanding attention. It pulls together your invoices, tasks, clients, and projects, using the same overdue and flag logic you see elsewhere in the app — so there's nothing extra to maintain.
Each category is worked out across your whole account, not over the rows that happen to be on screen. That's why the bell count, the dropdown headings, and the page all show the same figure.
The seven categories
- Overdue invoices — past their due date and not yet in a finished status. These are the same invoices the invoices list highlights in red.
- Flagged invoices — invoices you've flagged that aren't paid yet.
- Clients needing action — clients whose status is marked as requires action and whose next follow-up is approaching (within 3 days, shown yellow), overdue (in the past, shown red), or never scheduled (shown yellow — it needs a date). A follow-up more than 3 days out doesn't appear yet. Statuses with action suppression turned on never show here.
- Overdue tasks — past their deadline and not in a finished status.
- Flagged tasks — tasks you've flagged that aren't in a finished status.
- Flagged or ended projects — projects you've flagged, plus projects whose end date has passed, in both cases only while they're not yet in a finished status.
- Projects on budget watch — projects that have used 80% or more of their budget. Yellow from 80%, red once the budget is fully used. Only projects with a budget set appear, and only while they're not in a finished status.
Each category shows up as its own table. Empty categories don't appear, so you only see what's actually there. (The overdue-invoices table omits a status column — an overdue invoice is unpaid by definition. The two flagged tables add a flag description column, since every row in them carries a flag.)
Two things worth knowing about which tasks count:
- Subtasks alert like any other task. An overdue or flagged subtask shows up in its own right, not folded into its parent.
- A backlog status is still a status. A task parked in Backlog with a deadline in the past is overdue. Only statuses marked finished are exempt.
- Tasks whose every linked project is in a finished status drop out, matching how the tasks list hides them.
Page layout
- Search — a single box that filters across every category by name, number, description, and more.
- Tables — one per non-empty category, each with its own relevant columns (invoice number, client, due date, days overdue, and so on).
- Expandable rows — open a row to see more detail inline.
- Empty state — "Everything is up to date" when there's nothing to show.
Clicking a row opens that item's detail page.
The page shows up to 200 rows per category. Past that it says so — "Showing the first 200 of 412" — rather than letting a capped table read as the whole set. Narrow the search to reach the rest.
The alert bell
The top navigation has an alert-bell icon with a count of everything across the enabled categories. Click it for a compact summary, with a single View all link (in the dropdown header) to the Alerts page.
The dropdown is a glance, not a list: each category gets its own heading with the real count, the first five rows, and a "+N more" line when there are others. Flagged rows show their flag description underneath, so you can see why something was flagged without opening it.
Severity is colored consistently everywhere — red for overdue/urgent items, yellow for a client follow-up that's approaching or unscheduled and for a project that's nearing but hasn't passed its budget — so the bell, the alerts page, and the list rows always agree. Other list pages don't carry alert badges; overdue and flagged items are highlighted right there with a colored left accent instead.
Alerts and your plan
Alerts are a plan feature. On a plan that doesn't include them there's no bell, no Alerts page, and no colored left accent on list rows or kanban cards — the accent is part of alerting, and showing it with nowhere to follow up would only raise a question the app can't answer.
Two things stay on every plan, because they describe the item rather than alerting about it: the flag icon on a flagged row or card, and overdue dates, which stay red wherever they appear. The Alerting items dashboard tile is plan-gated like the rest: it names the plan that includes it and links straight to your plan page. See Plan and billing.
Alert settings
The alert settings control what the bell, dropdown, alerts page, and sidebar indicators show — on web they live inside Notification settings, and on mobile under Settings → Alerts. These settings only affect those indicators — they never change the inline overdue notes, the kanban card borders, or the colored row accents on list pages. (Your plan does: see Alerts and your plan above.)
- Enable alerts — the master switch. When off, the bell and sidebar indicators disappear, and opening the Alerts page shows a short "alerts are turned off" notice linking back here.
- Show count badges — when on, indicators show a numbered badge; when off, a plain dot. (Dots are the quieter alternative.)
- Per-category toggles — turn off Clients, Projects, Tasks, or Invoices to drop that entity from the bell count, the dropdown, and the alerts page. The toggles are per entity, not per category, so turning off Tasks drops both overdue tasks and flagged tasks, and turning off Projects drops flagged, ended, and over-budget projects together.
- Running timer — shows the green/red running-timer dot on the sidebar Time Tracker item. The timer widget in the top bar is always shown regardless of this toggle.
Everything defaults to on, with count badges.
How alerts clear
There's no dismiss or "mark as handled" button, with one exception noted below. Alerts clear themselves the moment the underlying item changes:
- An invoice moves to a finished status, or its due date moves forward.
- A task moves to a finished status, or its deadline moves forward.
- A client's status changes, or its follow-up date is pushed more than 3 days out.
- A project moves to a finished status, or its end date is pushed forward.
- A project's budget is raised above what's been billed, or cleared entirely.
- A flag is removed from an invoice, task, or project.
Finishing something clears its alert whether or not the flag is still on it — the flag stays on the item, it just stops asking for attention. The colored row accent on the list pages goes with it.
The exception is budget alerts, which you can silence per project without changing anything else. Edit the project and turn on Mute budget alerts: that project stops appearing under "Projects on budget watch" while keeping its budget, its progress bar, and its flag and end-date alerts. It's for a project you've knowingly taken over budget and don't need reminding about. Clearing the budget clears the mute too, so the next budget you set on that project starts out audible.
Because the page reads straight from your live data, fixing the underlying item removes it from the page right away.
Tips and edge cases
- Statuses drive every category. Items in a finished status never alert — not for being overdue, and not for carrying a flag. See Custom statuses.
- Action suppression silences the noise. Statuses like "Lost" should usually have action suppression on so they stop showing up under "Clients needing action".
- No snooze. The model is simple: fix it, or change its status. There's no way to defer an alert for later — muting a project's budget alerts is a lasting setting on that project, not a snooze.
- Budget alerts count billing, not payment. A project is on budget watch once enough has been invoiced against it, whether or not the client has paid. See Projects.
- Search spans categories. Type a client's name to see their overdue invoices, flagged invoices, and overdue tasks all at once.
On mobile
The mobile app surfaces the same categories and honors the same Alerts settings. A severity-colored alert bell with a count sits in the header; tapping it opens the alerts list. Alerts are also reachable from the right edge-swipe panel (when set as its target) or the hamburger menu — see Mobile navigation. The list is display-only with pull-to-refresh; tap an item to open its detail. Each section shows up to 50 rows and says "showing 50 of 137" when there are more. When alerts are turned off, the alerts screen shows a short notice linking to the alert settings.