Notifications

How notifications work

Notifications surface the moments that matter to you and your team: a client paid an invoice, a proposal was opened, a teammate was assigned to a project, or a period is waiting for approval. Instead of hunting through each page, you get a running feed of the things worth knowing about.

Two kinds of updates

The notification center holds two kinds of updates, and it helps to know the difference:

• Things that happened - one-off events at a point in time, such as a payment arriving or a proposal being opened. These stay in your feed as history even after you read them.
• Things that still need doing - open work that sits there until someone handles it, such as an overdue invoice or a contract waiting for approval. These live under the Needs attention view and clear themselves the moment the work is done.

Where notifications live

Notifications appear inside Belvak while you are signed in - in the bell and the notification center. They are separate from the automatic activity log, which records every change your team makes for auditing. Think of the activity log as the full history of what changed, and notifications as the short list of what is worth your attention right now.

They update on their own

The bell checks for new notifications on its own every few seconds while you have Belvak open, so the count stays current without a page refresh. Dates such as "due today" and "overdue" follow your own device time zone.

The notification bell

The bell is your at-a-glance signal that something needs you. It is always one click away, wherever you are in the platform.

Finding the bell

On a computer, the bell sits in the sidebar next to your name. On a phone or small screen, it moves to the top bar beside the settings gear. It looks the same everywhere, so you always know where to glance.

The badge

A small badge on the bell tells you what is waiting:

• A red number is your count of unread notifications - new things that happened since you last looked.
• A small dot with no number means nothing is unread, but there is still open work in Needs attention worth a look.
• No badge means you are all caught up.

The quick preview

On a computer, clicking the bell opens a compact preview of your latest unread notifications so you can scan them in place. Click any row to jump straight to the record it is about, or choose Open notification center at the bottom to see everything. On a phone, tapping the bell takes you directly to the full notification center.

The notification center

The notification center is the full-page view of everything, reached from the bell. It groups your notifications by day (Today, Yesterday, Earlier) so recent items are always on top, and loads older ones as you scroll.

Notifications, Previous, and Needs attention

Three chips at the top switch between views:

• Notifications - your unread feed, shown by default, with a count of how many are unread.
• Previous - the history of notifications you have already read, kept so you can look something up later.
• Needs attention - the open work that is still waiting, described in the next section.

Opening a notification

Click any notification to go straight to the record it is about - the invoice, project, proposal, client follow-up, or wherever the action happened. Opening a notification also marks it as read, so it moves from your unread feed into Previous.

Marking notifications as read

There are two ways to clear your unread feed. Open a notification to read just that one, or use Mark all as read in the header to clear everything at once. Read notifications are never deleted by this - they simply move to Previous. Your read and unread state is your own, so marking things read does not change what your teammates see.

Needs attention

The Needs attention view is a live to-do list of open work, rather than a feed of past events. It is the answer to "what is still waiting on us?"

Reminders that clear themselves

Each item here is calculated fresh every time, straight from your records. That means you never have to dismiss these reminders by hand: the moment the underlying work is done - the invoice is paid, the period is approved, the follow-up is completed - the item disappears on its own, for everyone. There is nothing to check off.

What shows up here

Needs attention groups your open work into a short list of reminders. Depending on what your role can access, these can include things like:

• Recurring invoices and contracts waiting to be reviewed and approved
• Invoices that are overdue and still owe a balance
• Your client follow-ups that are due or overdue
• Commission payouts and employee payments that are still pending
• Timesheets that have not been submitted yet, and invitations about to expire
• Storage running low, and proposals that have passed their date

Click any reminder to open the relevant page and take care of it.

Amounts and age

Where it helps, a reminder shows a little more context: the total amount involved (kept separate per currency, never mixed together) and how long the oldest item has been waiting. This makes it easy to see, for example, how much is tied up in overdue invoices at a glance.

Who sees what

You only see what you can access

Notifications respect the same roles and permissions as the rest of the platform. You are only notified about the areas your role can view. Someone without access to invoices, for instance, will not see payment or overdue-invoice notifications, and personal items such as a follow-up assigned to you go only to you.

Read state is personal

Your unread count, what you have read, and your Previous history are yours alone. Reading or clearing your notifications never changes what a teammate sees in their own bell.

When your access changes

If your role changes, your notifications adjust automatically. Items tied to an area you can no longer view drop out of your feed, and areas you gain access to start showing up. You do not need to do anything to keep the list accurate.