What Your BukaTime Alerts Mean

Your inbox holds two kinds of things. One is your clients' conversations. The other is BukaTime, a single sender that raises alerts about your studio: a client nobody has answered, a team member clients cannot book, a switch that is stopping messages from going out.

Most of these alerts are different from a normal notification. They describe something that is wrong right now, so they stay until the problem is fixed. This page explains where to find them, what each one means, and where to go to clear it.

Where Alerts Appear

Alerts show up in two places, and they are the same alerts.

The BukaTime thread. Open Messages. Among your client conversations you will see one row called BukaTime, labelled Business inbox. Its preview shows the most important alert, and its count shows how many need you. Open it to see every alert as a card.

Each card has a severity (critical, warning or notice), a title, one or two sentences on what is wrong, and usually a button that takes you to the right screen. When there is nothing to show, the thread says Nothing from BukaTime.

The bell. The bell in the top-right corner carries a red count of what needs attention. Open it for a short list, newest first. Click a row to go straight to the place that fixes it.

Opening the bell does not mark your clients' messages as read. Mark all read only clears the bell's own dots. The bell is a quick glance, so use the BukaTime thread when you want to work through everything.

Why Most Alerts Have No Dismiss Button

Most alerts have no Complete, Done or Snooze button, and that is on purpose. They report the studio's current state, so dismissing one would not fix anything and it would only come back. An alert clears itself as soon as the underlying problem is fixed. Fix it, and the card disappears.

A few kinds are different. You can act on those yourself, and the tables below say which.

Alerts About Booking

These mean clients cannot book, or cannot book everything. They rank first because they cost you appointments.

Alert	What it means	What clears it
Booking URL missing	Your studio has no web address for online booking	Set your address in General Settings
No active provider	Nobody on your team is switched on for bookings	Add or activate someone: Creating and Activating a Staff Member
No bookable services	You have no services on your menu	Creating Services and Variants
Provider not assigned to services	Nobody is set up to perform any service	Assigning Services to Staff
Some options have no provider	At least one service option has nobody who can do it	Assigning Services to Staff
Availability not set	Nobody bookable has working hours	Managing Staff Availability and Hours
Availability not set for a team member	That person is switched on for bookings but has no weekly hours, so clients cannot book them. The button reads Review staff	Set their hours: Managing Staff Availability and Hours

A brand-new studio does not see all of these at once. Setup steps are held back until you have chosen a setup path, and a studio that was already working sees any new gap straight away.

Alerts About Messages Not Going Out

Alert	What it means	What clears it
Client notifications are off	Your own notification switch is off, so clients get no confirmations, reminders or change notices. The button reads Review notifications	Turn the ones you want on: Setting Up Client Notifications
Automatic messages are paused by BukaTime support	Support has stopped your automatic messages. Your own settings cannot lift it. The button reads Contact support	Contact support
Customer notifications are paused by BukaTime	A platform-wide pause. There is no button, and nothing on your side needs changing	It clears when BukaTime lifts the pause
SMS budget almost used	You are close to your monthly text allowance. The button reads Review billing	It clears when the count drops or your allowance grows: Managing Your Subscription
Texts are billing as overage	You have used your included texts, and further ones are charged per text	It clears once you are back under your included texts, for example when your allowance grows
Some client texts weren't delivered	Your text allowance is used up, so texts to clients have been blocked in the last day. The button reads Review billing	Add a payment method or upgrade: Managing Your Subscription. It clears once texts stop being blocked
Email budget almost used	You are approaching the daily limit on outgoing email	It clears on its own once the volume drops back below the warning level

If a client says they never got a message and none of these is showing, work through Why a Client Didn't Get Their Reminder.

Alerts About Clients Waiting

Alert	What it means	What clears it
A client's message is unread	A client wrote at least a few hours ago and nobody has opened it. The button reads Open conversation	Open the conversation, or reply
The assistant handed a conversation to you	The AI receptionist could not finish a client's request and told them someone would follow up	Reply to the client
A client is waiting and has heard nothing	As above, but the message telling them so never reached them. This is the most urgent alert	Reply to the client
A client never confirmed their appointment	You asked a client to confirm and they did not answer in time	Follow up in the conversation
A client never came back on an offer	The assistant offered times and the client never picked one	Follow up in the conversation

The three that involve the assistant only appear on the Plus plan. See Messaging Clients for how to reply, and The AI Receptionist for what the assistant does.

Once someone has opened an unread message, the alert stands down, because you have looked at it and judged it. The assistant hand-off alerts are stricter. Reading does not clear them, since the client was promised a person. Only a reply from you does.

Alerts You Can Act On Yourself

These are the exceptions. They do not report a live fault, so they offer buttons.

Alert	What it is	What you can do
Unanswered customer question (Plus)	A client asked something the assistant did not know	Press Answer in conversation, write your answer once, and it is used from then on. It has Snooze, but no Complete. See Knowledge Base in The AI Receptionist
Is this answer still true? (Plus)	A saved answer has expired	Press Review answers, then confirm it or remove it
A one-off notice from BukaTime	A message BukaTime support writes to your studio, with its own title	Read it, then Complete it, or Snooze it to hide it for a week

Complete keeps the card in the thread, greyed out and marked completed, as a record.

Other Alerts You May See

Finish import review appears while an import is waiting for you to check its preview. Nothing from it is saved until you confirm. See Importing Clients from a CSV.
Migration help requested, Migration help — send us your export and Migration in progress track a request you made for help moving your records. They clear when the request is closed.
A count of open slots that have waitlist matches appears when a cancellation could be filled. See Managing the Waitlist.

Common Mistakes

Looking for a Dismiss button. Most alerts do not have one. Fix the cause and the alert goes.
Treating the bell as a to-do list. It is a glance. Marking a row read hides the dot and does not fix the problem.
Assuming an alert is a mistake because you fixed the problem a minute ago. Some alerts refresh in the background, so give it a short while.

FAQ

An alert says nothing on my side needs changing. Should I do something?

No. Customer notifications are paused by BukaTime is a platform-wide pause that BukaTime lifts.

I fixed the problem and the alert is still there.

Alerts re-check the studio's state regularly, not the instant you save. Give it a moment and refresh the page.

Why does the bell show a number when the BukaTime thread looks empty?

The bell also counts unread client messages and other activity, such as new online bookings. The number and the thread do not have to match.