8.1.4 Managing notification preferences
Managing notification preferences
8.1.4 account
Spectre Cloud sends notifications to keep you informed about account activity, billing events, and — depending on your plan and plugins — workflow updates related to your shop's day-to-day operations. The Notification Preferences section of your account settings lets you control which notifications you receive, how they are delivered, and at what frequency. This page covers what notifications are available, how to configure them, and the considerations that apply in multi-staff shops.
🔔 Types of Notifications in Spectre Cloud
Notifications in Spectre Cloud fall into three broad categories. Each category can typically be configured independently — enabling the ones you need and silencing the ones you do not.
Account and billing notifications
These are administrative notifications related to your subscription and account status. They are tied to the account owner's registered email address and cannot be fully disabled — some are sent regardless of notification preferences as they relate to billing and service continuity.
- ✅ Upcoming billing date reminders.
- ✅ Payment confirmation after a successful billing cycle.
- ✅ Payment failure alerts — sent immediately when a charge cannot be processed.
- ✅ Subscription change confirmations — when a plugin is added, removed, or a plan tier is changed.
- ✅ Account security alerts — password changes, email address updates, login from an unrecognised device.
📌 Note: Billing and security notifications are sent to the account owner's registered email address and cannot be disabled. They are service communications, not marketing — opting out of marketing emails does not affect delivery of billing or security alerts.
Workflow notifications
These notifications relate to activity within the app — spec sheet events, bowler record updates, and similar in-app activity. Availability varies by plan and plugin.
- ✅ Spec sheet created or updated by another staff member on the account.
- ✅ New bowler profile added to the account.
- ✅ Arsenal entry status changed (Active to Retired, for example).
- ✅ Job Board plugin notifications — if the Job Board plugin (
$15 USD/month) is active, notifications for job status changes (ball received, in progress, ready for pickup) can be configured here.
Product and update notifications
Communications from the Spectre team about new features, plugin releases, and platform updates. These are optional and can be disabled entirely if you prefer not to receive them.
- ✅ New feature announcements.
- ✅ Plugin availability updates.
- ✅ Scheduled maintenance notices.
- ✅ Tips and best practice guides from the Spectre team.
📬 Notification Delivery Methods
Spectre Cloud delivers notifications through two channels. Each can be configured independently for different notification types:
| Delivery method | Description | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Sent to the registered account email address or individual staff user email | Billing events, security alerts, summaries — anything that benefits from a permanent record in the inbox | |
| In-app notifications | Displayed within the Spectre Cloud interface — typically a badge or notification panel accessible from the top navigation | Workflow updates, activity alerts — anything relevant to the current session rather than requiring attention outside the app |
⚠️ Verify with Spectre team: Confirm whether push notifications to mobile devices (iOS and Android) are supported in addition to email and in-app notifications — if so, add a third row to the table and document how to enable them.
🖥️ Accessing Notification Preferences on Desktop
- Click your pro shop name in the top-right corner to open the profile menu.
- Select Account or Account Settings from the dropdown.
- Navigate to the Notifications or Notification Preferences section.
- Review the list of available notification types — each is shown with its current enabled or disabled state.
- Toggle individual notifications on or off using the controls provided.
- For notifications that offer a delivery method choice, select Email, In-app, or Both as appropriate.
- Click Save to apply your preferences.
📱 Accessing Notification Preferences on Mobile
- Tap your pro shop name or profile icon in the top-right corner.
- Select Account or Account Settings.
- Tap Notifications or Notification Preferences.
- Toggle notifications on or off as needed.
- Tap Save to apply changes.
✨ Recommended Configuration by Shop Type
The right notification configuration depends on how your shop operates. The following starting points cover the most common shop profiles:
Solo operator — single device
- ✅ Enable all billing and security notifications by email — these are critical and should never be missed.
- ✅ Enable in-app workflow notifications if you find them useful as reminders during the fitting session.
- ✅ Disable email workflow notifications — as the sole user, you do not need to be notified by email about changes you made yourself.
- ✅ Enable or disable product update notifications based on personal preference — if you want to stay current on new features, keep them on.
Multi-staff shop
- ✅ Enable all billing and security notifications by email for the account owner.
- ✅ Enable email or in-app workflow notifications for staff members who need to be aware of changes made by colleagues — particularly useful in shops where one staff member fits and another drills.
- ✅ Confirm that each staff member's notification preferences are configured at the individual user level, not inherited from the account owner's settings.
- ✅ If the Job Board plugin is active, configure job status notifications for the staff member responsible for customer communications — not for all staff members simultaneously.
Multi-location shop
- ✅ Route billing notifications to the account owner or manager, not to individual location staff.
- ✅ Configure workflow notifications at the user level so each location's staff only receive alerts relevant to their own activity — not account-wide changes from other locations.
🔌 Job Board Plugin — Notification Configuration
If your shop uses the Job Board plugin ($15 USD/month), additional notification options become available for tracking ball service workflow status. These notifications are designed to keep both staff and bowlers informed as a ball moves through the workshop queue.
- ✅ Ball received — notify staff when a new job is added to the board.
- ✅ Job in progress — notify when a job's status is updated to in-progress.
- ✅ Ball ready for pickup — notify staff and optionally the bowler when a job is marked complete.
- ✅ Bowler-facing notifications — if Spectre Cloud supports outbound customer notifications via email or SMS for job completion, configure the contact method and template here.
⚠️ Verify with Spectre team: Confirm whether outbound bowler-facing notifications (email or SMS to the bowler when their ball is ready) are a feature of the Job Board plugin, and if so, what contact information is used and whether the bowler needs to have consented to receive them.
🏢 Notification Preferences in Multi-Staff Accounts
In accounts with multiple staff user accounts, notification preferences operate at two levels — the account level and the individual user level. Understanding which level controls which notifications prevents situations where important alerts are going to the wrong person or not going to anyone at all.
- ✅ Account-level notifications — billing, security, and subscription events. Controlled by the account owner and sent to the account's registered email address.
- ✅ User-level notifications — workflow events, in-app alerts, and product updates. Each staff member configures their own preferences from their individual user account settings.
- ✅ Account owners can review but should not override individual user notification preferences without a reason — staff members are best placed to decide which workflow alerts are useful to them.
- ❌ Do not configure all workflow notifications to go to the account owner's email — in a multi-staff shop this creates an inbox overload for the owner and means staff do not receive the alerts that help them do their jobs.
🔄 When to Review Your Notification Preferences
Notification preferences are not a set-and-forget configuration. Review them when:
- ✅ A staff member joins or leaves — add or remove their user-level notification configuration accordingly.
- ✅ A plugin is added or removed — new plugins may introduce notification types that are not yet configured; removed plugins may leave orphaned notification settings.
- ✅ Your shop's workflow changes significantly — a shop that adds a ball service counter may want Job Board notifications that were not relevant before.
- ✅ You are receiving notifications you find unhelpful or missing notifications you need — a five-minute review of the preferences panel is faster than managing a noisy inbox indefinitely.
Related Sections
- 8.1.1 — Updating your pro shop name and display information
- 8.1.2 — Changing your email address
- 8.1.3 — Changing your password
- 8.1.5 — Managing staff access and user accounts
- 8.2.1 — Subscription plans — what is included and how to change
- 8.2.2 — Adding and removing plugins
✨ Tip: If you are unsure which notifications to enable when setting up a new account, start with everything on and spend the first two weeks noting which notifications you act on and which you ignore. Disable the ones you consistently ignore — a notification that never prompts action is just noise, and noise trains you to stop reading notifications altogether, including the ones that matter.