Notifications
Read the bell's alerts - overdue invoices, bounced emails and announcements - and act on each one.
The bell at the top of every screen taps you on the shoulder about things worth a look. A notification is a summary, not the full story - to actually do anything you click through to the real page.
Two words worth pinning down: Read means "I've seen this" (it stays in your list, just not bold). Archive means "I'm done with this" - and archive is not delete. Archived alerts are kept and can be restored any time.
Reading an alert never removes it. Archiving is the only thing that takes one out of your list, and even that keeps it.
What the bell tells you
| Alert | Means | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Overdue invoice | Still unpaid a week after it was due | Chase the payment |
| Bounced email | A client email didn't get through | Check the address and resend |
| Email failed to send | It never left Wattle, as opposed to bouncing after it did | Open it from the notice and Retry |
| Low stock / expiring | At or below reorder point, or a batch expires within 30 days | Reorder, or use up the batch |
| Schedule 8 alert | A controlled-drug adjustment or stock-check discrepancy in the last fortnight | Review it on the register - auditors look at these |
| Stocktake due | The controlled-drug register is due its count | Do the stock check |
| S8 charge awaiting stock | A controlled drug was billed but the register balance is zero | Record a receipt or opening balance; the reminder clears itself |
| Subscription payment didn't go through | A card payment failed | Update the card. Nobody gets locked out meanwhile |
| Device timezone differs from the clinic | You're working from a different timezone to the one the clinic is set to | Check any times you enter today, or fix the clinic's timezone |
| Catalogue prices changed after a draft was started | One or more catalogue prices moved after these draft invoices were billed, so they still hold the old amounts | Nothing, if the amounts you billed still stand. Otherwise Review and update, tick the lines to move and press once |
| Imported visits need a date | Visits brought over from your previous records whose source document gave no readable date. They show 1 January 1900 as a placeholder | Open each one from the list in the notice and set the real date. It drops off the list as you go |
| Feature announcement | News about Wattle | Nothing to action |
Some kinds only appear if your clinic uses that part of Wattle.
Common tasks
| I want to... | Do this |
|---|---|
| Check what's waiting | Click the bell. It opens on All, so something you have already read is still there |
| See the full list | View all →, or go to /notifications |
| Mark one read | Hover it → the checkmark |
| Clear the backlog | Mark all as read |
| Flag one to come back to | Hover a read alert → the envelope icon |
| Tuck one away | Hover → the archive (box) icon |
| Get it back | Archive tab → hover → the box-with-arrow icon |
| Act on it | Click the row in the bell dropdown - it takes you to the invoice or email |
| Read it without leaving your work | Click the row on the full page - it opens a preview panel instead |
Both places show the same alerts, under the same Unread / All / Archived tabs. (The last tab reads Archive on the full page and Archived in the dropdown - same thing.)
The one real difference between the two views
This catches people out, so it's deliberate:
- In the bell dropdown, clicking a row takes you to the invoice or email and marks it read. That's the fast path when you want to act.
- On the full Notifications page, clicking a row opens a detail panel on the right instead - it does not whisk you away. Use the panel's View source button to jump. That button only appears when there's somewhere to go.
Some alerts cover several records at once - imported visits needing a date, for instance. Those list each record as its own link inside the panel, so you can work down them one at a time.
So if clicking an alert yanked you out of what you were doing, open it from the full page next time.
When a catalogue price changes after a draft was started
A draft invoice keeps its own copy of every price. That's deliberate: what you billed on the day is what the draft says, and changing a price in the catalogue never reaches back into work you've already done.
The side effect is that if you reprice something, any draft raised before that still holds the old figure and will bill at it. So the bell tells you.
One notice covers the whole repricing, not one per invoice. It says how many catalogue prices moved, when, and how many drafts are affected, and it lists every affected draft by pet and owner.
If the amounts you billed still stand, there's nothing to do. That's a perfectly normal answer, and often the right one.
If you do want them on the new prices, choose Review and update. You get a list of every affected line with what it bills now and what it would bill, each with a tick. Everything starts ticked, so the simple case is one press. Untick anything you want left alone, then Update.
Nothing changes until you press it, and unticking a line means that line is not touched at all. This matters more than it sounds: a figure you've already said out loud to an owner shouldn't move because an unrelated price changed on the same invoice.
You'll also see a banner on the draft itself when you open it, with the same Review and update for that one invoice.
It only ever applies to drafts. A finalised invoice keeps the price it was issued at, because that's what makes it a valid tax invoice.
Gotchas
- "The badge says 10 but I only see 8." The dropdown shows your 8 most recent. The rest aren't lost - View all →.
- "The red dot vanished when I pointed at it." Hovering swaps the dot for the action buttons. Move away and it comes back.
- "I think I deleted one." You archived it. Find it in Archived and restore it.
- "I restored an urgent alert but it's not bold any more." Restoring brings things back as read. Hover and click the envelope to mark it unread.
- "I'm not sure my click worked." The confirmation is brief and easy to miss. Check the tabs instead - a read alert leaves Unread, an archived one appears in Archived.
- Overdue alerts arrive 7 days after the due date, not on it - the client gets a grace period first. So an alert that seems late is working as intended.
- Greyed-out "Mark all as read" just means nothing is unread.
- An empty bell is normal when there's genuinely nothing pending.
- There's no working notification settings page yet. You may find a link that looks like it should open one and doesn't. Known gap, not something you did - and there's nothing you need to configure for the bell to work.
Related
How the app talks to you · Emailing clients · Invoices · Buttons & symbols