When does each scheduled action fire?

A reference for staff who need to predict — or explain to a client — exactly when an automated action will happen. All times shown in the client's timezone unless noted; the cron jobs themselves run in UTC and translate per-client.

Payroll

Action	Fires when	Triggered by	Recipients
Cycle initiation	The client's local 09:00 on its defaultScheduleDay of the month	Hourly cron — picks up clients whose local clock hits 09:00 in that hour	All active contacts with Can submit intake
Day-2 reminder	48 hours after the cycle request email if the client hasn't submitted	check-pending-submissions daily at 09:00 UTC	Same submitter contacts; old token is invalidated, fresh 48-hour link sent
Day-5 reminder	5 days after the cycle request email	Same daily check	Same submitter contacts
Day-7 reminder	7 days after the cycle request email	Same daily check	Same submitter contacts
Approval request	Within ~30 seconds of you clicking Generate export (when the client has an active approver)	Synchronous from the export action	First active contact with Can approve, alphabetical by name
Approval reminder	48 hours after approval request if not yet decided	Daily check	Same approver contact

NOTE

"Local 09:00" follows the IANA timezone on the client record. A client at Asia/Singapore initiates at SGT 09:00 regardless of UTC drift. If you change the client's timezone, the next cycle uses the new zone — already-scheduled cycles don't move.

Bookkeeping

Action	Fires when	Triggered by
Folder sync (Drive / SharePoint / Dropbox)	Configurable per channel; default hourly	bookkeeping.folder-sync cron
Document classify-and-draft	Within ~30 seconds of a document landing	Pg-boss queue, runs as the OCR pipeline finishes
Reconciliation matcher	Triggered by you, runs immediately	Synchronous from Run matcher click
Client portal dispatch	Triggered by you, sends within ~30 seconds	Synchronous from Dispatch unreconciled click

Cross-cutting platform jobs

Job	Cadence	Effect
Outbox dispatcher	Every 10 seconds	Drains the outbox table, sends emails / fires webhooks
OCR processing	On-demand per file	Vision + Claude pipeline, typically <30 s per page
Retention purge	03:00 UTC on the 1st of the month	Moves cycles past the retention window from CLOSED to ARCHIVED, deletes raw uploads per the retention policy

Token lifetimes

Token type	TTL	Refreshed by
Cycle request magic link	48 hours	Day-2 / 5 / 7 reminders mint a fresh token; old one is invalidated
Approval request magic link	48 hours	Approval reminder mints a fresh token
Bookkeeping client portal link	48 hours	Re-dispatch from the reconciliation run
Staff session cookie	Per session policy (see SLO)	Re-login

How to figure out "when will the next email fire for this client?"

1. Open the client's Cycles page.
2. Look at the most recent cycle's status and last reminder sent timestamp on the audit tab.
3. Match it against the table above. Example: if the cycle is REQUESTED and the last reminder was 2 days ago, the next reminder will fire on the next 09:00 UTC daily check, day-5.

If the client says "I haven't received anything", see Verify an email was sent.

Related

• Verify an email was sent
• Why isn't my cycle showing?
• Notifications catalog — every email the platform can send