Set up an alert for large charges, low balances or budgets

An alert watches one thing in a ledger for you: a large charge, a balance that drops too low, or a budget that reaches a share of its cap. When it goes off, Pennyweight saves it and your AI tells you. If you're new to how your AI and Pennyweight work together, start with how Pennyweight works.

How to do it

1. Pick the kind of alert. A large-charge alert watches for any single new transaction over an amount, money in or out. A low-balance alert watches for an account's balance to drop below an amount. A budget alert watches for a budget to reach a share of its cap, from 1% to 100%, such as 80%. The budget has to exist first, so see set a monthly budget if you don't have one.
2. Ask your AI to set it up. Give it the amount, and the account or budget to watch. An alert needs a name too, and your AI can choose one.
3. Say which ledger it belongs to if it isn't your active ledger. Each alert watches one ledger, and its account or budget must be in that ledger.
4. Say how you want to hear about it. An in-app alert reaches you only through your AI. An email alert, the default, also sends a short email notice.

What you'll see

Your AI confirms the alert with its name, kind, amount and ledger. A money amount carries a currency: the account's for a low-balance alert, and the ledger's for a large-charge alert unless you name another. When you list your alerts, each one shows when it last went off and how many times it went off that you haven't marked as read. When your AI connects, Pennyweight tells it how many you haven't read, so it can show you and mark them.

When Pennyweight checks your alerts

• Not in real time. Pennyweight checks your alerts when new data lands: when a transaction is added or imported, when new bank transactions reach your ledger at your next web app visit or AI call, and when your AI connects, at most once every 15 minutes. It also checks right after you create an alert. See how bank sync works.
• Large charges. The alert looks only at transactions added after you set it up and dated in the last 7 days, so importing past transactions never sets it off. Transfers between your accounts don't count, and neither do transactions in another currency. Each charge sets it off once, and a pending charge and its posted version count as one.
• Low balances. The alert goes off once each time the balance drops below the amount. It can go off again only after the balance is back at or above the amount. If the balance is already below the amount when you set it up, it goes off at the first check.
• Budgets. The alert goes off once per month for each share you set. It stays quiet for a paused budget, a savings goal, or a budget whose spending is in another currency.

Email notices

• An email alert sends a notice that says only "You have new Pennyweight alerts", with no amounts or names. You get at most one per clock hour (UTC), however many alerts go off.
• The notice goes to your account's primary email address.
• Alerts in a demo ledger never send email.

Good to know

• Snooze an alert. Ask your AI to snooze it until a date and time. Pennyweight doesn't check it until then.
• Delete an alert. Deleting needs a reason, which your AI gives. Its history stays.
• See the history. Ask your AI for your alert history over a date range, for one ledger or all of them. After you've seen it, ask your AI to mark the alerts as read. They stay in the history.
• No alerts page on the web. You set up and check alerts through your AI.
• Older alert types. Alerts for new merchants, missed syncs or rising recurring charges can't be created any more. Older ones stay listed as not checked, and they never go off.
• An alert stayed quiet? See my alert didn't notify me.