A Notice You Cannot Switch Off Should Get Quieter
Some notices must always be sent. That is exactly why they have to be gentle: a message nobody can switch off, sent every day, teaches people to stop reading. A schedule that thins out, and the rules we hold ourselves to.
There is a kind of message that cannot come with an off switch. The notice that a subscription has lapsed, that a payment failed, that a workspace is booked for deletion. Turning those off would leave the people responsible for an account finding out too late. But a message that cannot be refused carries a duty the optional ones do not: it has to earn every send.
The failure everybody has received
The usual way to write a reminder is a daily job that asks one question — is the condition still true? — and sends if it is. It works for a week. Then the condition stays true for a month, because the workspace was abandoned or the renewal is stuck in somebody’s approvals, and the same message arrives thirty mornings running. By the fifth it is noise; by the tenth it is filtered; and the one that said something new is filed with the rest.
A reminder that only checks whether something is still wrong will never stop.
Three rules for a notice that cannot be refused
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Send on set days, not every day
Anchor the schedule to an event — a plan end, a failed payment — and send on milestones around it, closer together near the deadline and further apart after it.
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Never two days running
Two anchors can each have a milestone on neighbouring days. Whatever the schedule says, one account gets at most one of these notices in any three days.
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Slow to monthly, then stop
After the first month the cadence drops to once a month, and after a year it ends. Something unanswered for a year needs a person, not another email.
The schedule we send on
These are the notices AWRA sends to the people responsible for a workspace. They are mandatory, and this is all of them.
| Notice | When it is sent |
|---|---|
| Plan about to end | 14, 7, 3 and 1 days before |
| Plan has ended | 1, 7, 14 and 30 days after, then once a month for up to a year |
| Payment failed | The day it fails, then 3, 7, 14 and 30 days after, then monthly |
| Grace period ending | 7, 3 and 1 days before; 1, 7, 14 and 30 days after, then monthly |
| Workspace booked for deletion | The day it is booked, once a week, then 3 days and 1 day before |
Every one of them also arrives as a notice in the bell for the same people, so a lapsed plan is visible to an admin who signs in before they open their mail.
The same discipline for your own reminders
The reminders your workspace sends — overdue invoices to customers, approvals waiting on a manager, documents about to expire — are switchable, and each has a cadence you set on the same row: daily, weekly, monthly or every so many days. The rule of thumb is the one above. Daily is for the week the deadline falls in. After that, weekly reads as persistence and daily reads as a machine. One reminder clock for every overdue invoice covers the customer side in detail.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- Mandatory notices about plans, failed payments, grace periods and deletion, sent on fixed milestone days
- At most one of these notices to a workspace in any three days
- A monthly tail after the first month, ending after a year
- An in-app copy of each notice for the same people
- A daily, weekly, monthly or custom cadence on every switchable reminder
More we can add to your workspace
- A different reminder cadence for each customer or each approver
- Reminder schedules anchored to your own business calendar and holidays
Where we point you to a specialist
- Notices about your subscription and a scheduled deletion stay mandatory. We would rather send fewer of them than give anyone a way to miss the one that matters.
Anything above that you need, we can build for you
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do for your organisation. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are both in the product because clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself, and the same door is open for whatever you just read about. One qualification so this is worth what it claims: a small number of things on this blog we deliberately leave to a specialist rather than build — a statutory ledger we will not sign our name to, a rule that would decide a tax question for you, a clinical or member-funds record that belongs in a regulated system — and where that is true the post says so in those words. Everything else is a scope, a timeline and a price.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
The module-shaped additions, which are the ones readers ask for most often
A price list with real discount authority, a customer-facing quotation that expires, a bill of materials or recipe costing, a staff advance that is issued, acquitted and chased, a member or unit ledger, a matching rule that holds a payment. Each of these is a build rather than a setting, and each has been quoted before — a bigger piece of work than a custom field, with a written spec and a date instead of a roadmap slide.
The report, document or pack nothing currently produces
The board pack in the shape your board actually asks for, a donor or funder layout, an invoice or receipt template carrying what your regulator or your customer expects, a dataset the report builder cannot reach yet. Usually the fastest thing on this list to deliver, because the data is already in the system.
Systems, rails and hardware you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store, core banking or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed. Plus the physical edge: a scanner, a scale, a weighbridge or a till peripheral feeding the door it belongs to.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. Nothing here waits on a regulator or a published specification, which is why operational builds are the ones we quote fastest. Tell us the requirement that would otherwise rule us out — that is a better first conversation than a demo.
Tell us what your operation needsVerdict
A notice that cannot be switched off owes the reader restraint: set days, never two in a row, monthly once the urgency has passed, and an end. Hold your own reminders to the same rules and people will keep reading them.
Audit one of your reminders
What event is it anchored to?
Good answer
A due date, an expiry, a deadline.
If not
It is checking a condition, and it will never stop.
How often does it send a month after the deadline?
Good answer
Weekly at most.
If not
Lower the cadence on its row.
When does it end?
Good answer
When the item is resolved, or after a set time.
If not
Hand the long tail to a person.
Set the cadence on your reminders
Every switchable reminder carries its own cadence in Settings → Notification preferences.
Talk to usFrequently asked questions
How often does AWRA OpsHub send plan expiry reminders?
On set days around the plan end: 14, 7, 3 and 1 days before, and 1, 7, 14 and 30 days after, then once a month for up to a year. A workspace never receives two of these notices within three days.
Can I unsubscribe from billing notices?
No. Notices about your subscription and a scheduled deletion are always sent to the people responsible for the account. They are spaced so they never arrive daily, and they stop when the plan is renewed.
How do I change how often my own reminders are sent?
Each switchable reminder has a cadence on its row in the notification settings: daily, weekly, monthly, or every chosen number of days.
Why not just send a reminder every day until it is resolved?
Because after a few days people filter it, and then the reminder that says something new is filed with the rest. Fewer, better-timed reminders are read.
