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TimeTracker tells you when something needs you – a task assigned, a timesheet waiting for approval, an invoice gone overdue. This page explains how that system works so you can tune it instead of muting it.

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What notifications are

A notification is one message about one thing that happened. It has a trigger, a set of recipients, and one or more channels it travels on. There are three channels:
“Inbox” means notifications only. It is not a task inbox. Your tasks live under My tasks.

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The one rule that explains most questions

You are never notified about your own action. The person who performed an action is removed from that action’s recipient list. Sarah Lin assigns a task to Jonas Bergman – Jonas is notified, Sarah is not. Sarah assigns a task to herself – nobody is notified at all. If the only would-be recipient is the person who acted, no notification record is created. There is nothing to find later, because nothing was ever sent.
This is the answer to “why didn’t I get an email?” nine times out of ten. Check whether you were the one who did the thing.
There are a few messages the system raises on your behalf – your own daily reminders, an export you asked for, a security alert about your own account, and billing notices to Owners and Admins. Those deliberately reach you even though you set them in motion. They are marked self in the notification types reference.

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Categories, not individual switches

You do not switch a single notification type on or off. You switch a category on or off, per channel. There are seven. This keeps the settings screen short. Seven rows, two channel columns, done.

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Settings live on the person

Your notification settings belong to you, not to the workspace. If Sarah Lin works in both Northwind Studio and a second workspace, she sets her preferences separately in each. There are two places, and they do different jobs: A workspace default is a default, not a lock. Your own switch always wins. The full order, highest wins: If you have never touched your settings, level 3 or 4 applies and you receive the normal set. Nothing is silently off.
Daily reminders work slightly differently. A reminder is on only if both the workspace and you have it on. An admin switching a reminder slot off is a floor you cannot raise. See Reminders.
Three things ignore every preference: the invitation email sent to a new person, and the two security alerts – email address changed and unusual sign-in. An invite that cannot email is useless, and a security alert you never see defeats its purpose.

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What decides whether a message reaches you

Four gates run in order. All four must pass.
1

The app is on

Time Clock notifications cannot fire if the Time Clock app is off. See Apps and modules.
2

You are a recipient

Each notification type has its own rule for who receives it – the assignee, the approver, the project’s manager, every Owner and Admin. The actor is always removed.
3

You can see the thing

Your role, capabilities and supervision scope decide what reaches you. A Member does not get told about an invoice they cannot open.
4

The channel is on for that category

The six-level precedence above resolves to a yes or a no per channel.

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Priority

Every notification carries a priority. Most are normal. A few are high – approval escalations, payment action required, and the two security alerts. High priority means the message is more prominent, not that it travels differently.

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Example

Priya Raman is the Project Manager at Northwind Studio. Sarah Lin submits her week for Bluebird Coffee – Website Redesign and routes it to Priya.
  1. Sarah is the actor, so Sarah gets nothing.
  2. Priya was named as the approver, so Priya is the only recipient.
  3. Priya has the Approvals category on for in-app and email, so she gets both.
  4. Priya does not act on it. After 24 hours an escalation pings Priya again.
  5. Still nothing after 72 hours, so Maya Ellis (Owner) and Tom Whitfield (Admin) are pulled in.
  6. Priya approves. Now Sarah is the recipient of timesheet approved, and Priya – the actor this time – gets nothing.

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How long notifications are kept

Removing an old notification never touches the task, timesheet or invoice it was about.

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Permissions

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Common questions

Because you did it. The person who performs an action is excluded from its recipients. This is deliberate and applies to nearly every notification type.
No. In TimeTracker, “Inbox” means notifications only. Your assigned work is under My tasks.
No. A workspace default only applies to people who have not made their own choice, and it never rewrites anyone’s saved switches. Your own setting always beats a default. Daily reminders are the one exception – see Reminders.
You can switch every category off on both channels, except the three mandatory messages – the invite email and the two security alerts. Muting approvals while you are an approver is a good way to hold up a team’s week, so turn email off and keep in-app on instead.
Open your profile and pick the Notifications tab. If you land on Settings → Notifications without permission to be there, the page offers a Go to my profile button that takes you to the right place.
No. Preferences are per person per workspace. Set them in each workspace you belong to.

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Troubleshooting

Nothing arrives at all. Check your email address on your profile, then check your notification settings for a category you switched off. See also Email not arriving. Too much arrives. Turn the email channel off for the noisiest category and keep in-app on, or switch to a digest. A whole family of notifications is missing. The app that owns it may be turned off in Settings → Apps.

Inbox

Read, filter and clear your in-app notifications.

Your notification settings

Choose what reaches you, and on which channel.

Workspace defaults

Set the starting point for everyone in the workspace.

Notification types

Every notification, its trigger, and its recipients.

Email notifications

What emails look like and how delivery works.

Reminders

The daily checks and how to schedule them.