Notification Bell and What Appears In It

Availability: all plans

The notification bell in the top bar is where ServiceVisit tells you and your team that something needs attention, such as a customer approving an estimate or a connection to your accounting system stopping. This guide explains what the bell shows, how to clear items from it, and which events put something there.

Before you start

The bell is available to everyone who signs in to the provider area, on every plan. Each person has their own bell: a notification is addressed to individual team members, so marking one as read clears it only for you. Nothing here needs special permission.

Steps

Look at the bell icon in the top bar. A red badge shows how many notifications you have not read. The badge reads 9+ when there are more than nine.
Select the bell to open the Notifications panel. It lists up to ten unread notifications, newest first. Each row shows a title, a message and how long ago it arrived, such as "Just now", "5m ago" or "2h ago".
Select a row to open the page it points to. The notification is marked read first, so it leaves the panel and the badge count drops by one. A notification without a link is simply marked read.
To clear one without opening it, select the check mark on its right (its tooltip reads Mark read).
To clear everything at once, select Mark all read at the top of the panel.
When nothing is waiting, the panel says "You're all caught up".
Select Notification history · Last 7 days at the bottom to see older and already-read notifications. The guide on notification history covers that page.

What puts something in the bell

Notifications written for the provider team include:

Estimate approved and Estimate declined, when a customer acts on an estimate you sent. The message names the customer and the estimate number, and for an approval the total.
Scheduled work needs moving, when a team member's schedule change leaves booked work outside their declared hours.
A service has no available technician, when a published service has no eligible technician at a location for online booking.
Some records are no longer exporting, when records have failed to reach your accounting system repeatedly and are no longer being retried.
A disconnected notice naming the system, when your accounting or payment connection stops working. Reconnect it to start sending again.

These go to your active team members, not to the customer.

Tips

The panel refreshes itself about every 30 seconds and again each time you open it, so you do not need to reload the page to see a new item. The panel only shows unread items; use the history page to find one you already cleared.

If something goes wrong

If you see "Could not mark notification as read. Please try again." or "Could not mark notifications as read. Please try again.", the change did not save; try again. If the badge stops updating, sign in again, since the bell stops checking for new items once your session has ended. If you expect a notification and see none, check that the event applies to your team; customer messages about jobs and invoices are controlled in Notification settings, not in the bell.

Notification History and Mark as Read — The Notifications page keeps a full list of everything sent to you in the app, including items you have already read. Use it to find a notification you cleared from the bell, to work through a…
Customer Notification Settings and Event Policies — Notification settings decide which messages your customers receive about their jobs, estimates and invoices, and through which channels. You set default channels for the whole business, then adjust…
Manage your provider settings — ServiceVisit keeps the setup of your business in one Settings area. With this ability you can open and change Company Profile, Branding, Locations and Defaults. It also covers Work Order Templates…