How to create alert rules

This article explains how to create rules for alerts which, if triggered, will notify you of important events and client activities. It also explains what happens when an alert is triggered and how to hide an alert.

As an account manager, you can set up a variety of alert rules for your clients. For example, to notify you that their VAT return is due in a specified number of days or that their Open Banking consent is about to expire. These alert rules will be visible to all account managers in the practice.

FreeAgent checks these rules automatically and will notify you when a client triggers an alert. Please note that the alerts won’t all be triggered at the same time as some alerts are checked on an hourly basis and some are checked overnight.

Senior account managers can view and receive details of triggered alerts for all of the practice’s clients, whereas non-senior account managers will only see and receive details of triggered alerts for their own clients.

Creating an alert rule

Log in to your Practice Dashboard and navigate to the ‘Alerts’ tab at the top of the screen.

Select ‘New Alert Rule’ in the top-right. This will bring up a 'New Alert Rule' pop-up.

There are 13 alert rules to choose from. Select the alert rule that you want to create from the ‘Rule type’ drop-down menu.

Below are two examples of alert rules.

Example 1: transaction value over a chosen amount

If you select ‘A transaction value is over a certain amount’, you’ll need to choose the category that you want to monitor from the ‘Category’ drop-down menu. You can choose to monitor all categories by selecting ‘Any’ from the list. You’ll also need to enter the amount that will trigger the alert rule in the ‘Amount’ field. For example, the below alert would notify you if your client entered a transaction over £500 in the 'Computer Hardware' category.

Example 2: client has not logged in

If you select 'User hasn't logged in for a number of days', you need to choose whether you only want to be alerted if the primary user on that account hasn't logged in, or if you want to be alerted if none of the users set up on your client’s account have logged in. Select the relevant option from the ‘User’ drop-down menu.

Next, enter how many days after the client's last login you want to be alerted in the ‘Days’ field. For example, the below alert would notify you if none of the users set up on your client’s account logs in for 14 days.

Once you’ve chosen the appropriate rule, select 'Add Alert Rule' to complete the process. The alert will then be added to the ‘My client alerts’ tab.

What happens when an alert is triggered?

Once the alerts are running, when you navigate to the ‘Alerts’ tab in your Practice Dashboard, you'll be able to see if any of your clients have triggered an alert. Here are a few examples:

Example 1: clients who haven't logged in to their FreeAgent account for over 30 days have triggered an alert.

Example 2: a client has explained a transaction over £500 to ‘Computer Hardware’. To correct the transaction explanation, select the transaction description, which will take you to the transaction in the client’s account. Once you’ve made the relevant changes, select ‘Save Changes’ to update the explanation.

The alert box in your Practice Dashboard will refresh the next time alerts are run, so after an hour you’ll no longer see this particular transaction in the alert box. To download a CSV file of the alert, select ‘Export’ at the bottom of the alert. You can then open the file in the spreadsheet software of your choice.

How to hide an alert

To hide an alert, navigate to the ‘Alerts’ tab at the top of the screen.

Select the client's name on the alert you want to hide.

From their client profile, select 'Hide' next to the alert you want to hide. Please note that once you hide an alert, you won’t be able to reverse this action.

You will no longer see the alert for this client in the ‘My client alerts’ tab on your Practice Dashboard.