Quick guide to Account Alerts
Tips on creating useful Account Alerts
After you've created your first couple of alerts, you'll find that this is an
incredibly simple and powerful tool. We find ourselves asking how we ever got
along before Account Alerts were available.
Type in your Descriptions carefully.
The best way to ensure you get the
alert you want is to make sure that the text you enter in the “Matching Description”
box exactly matches a part or all of the transaction description. You’ll want to
be careful not to add extra spaces, or leave any out. If you use more than one
word, be sure that the words you choose appear immediately next to each other in the
description. For instance, if a transaction description contains “TRANSFER
INTERNET SHARE” you can generate an alert if you include the word “transfer” or the
word “internet” or the word “share.”
An alert would also be generated by including the phrase “transfer internet” or
“internet share”. You would not receive an alert if you entered “transfer share;”
however, because those words do not appear immediately next to each other. Don’t
use any characters that do not appear in a transaction description, such as commas,
quote marks, or dollar signs. The word or phrase you choose can be entered in
either upper or lower case letters, and can include numbers also.
How do I know I’ve entered the right Matching Description for the transaction I
want to know about?
The best way to ensure you’re getting the right message is to
view your account history, and see what the description for the type of transaction you
are interested in looks like when it appears in your account history. You’ll
notice right away that there are some words and characters that appear every time that
type of transaction occurs, and other characters that are unique to each individual
transaction. Use key words or phrases that are common to all transactions of that
type. The Keyword Guide can be a big help.
Examples of useful alerts:
You can set up a wide variety of alerts to let you know about virtually any activity
on your account. There is no limit to the number and type of alerts you can
create. Once you’ve used the system a few times and received your alerts, you’ll
find it easy to set up an alert for nearly any kind of account activity.
Meanwhile, follow this link for some examples of alerts you
can set up.
Setting up your Account Alerts:
Each Account Alert is set up using information provided by you in several different
categories (or, “fields”) in the Account Alert set-up screens, so our system knows
just what you are interested in being notified about. These fields include:
- Select Category
- Select Account
- Alert me when
- Alert me every day (appears on “Account Transactions” category only)
- Conditions
- Check Number
- Matching Description
- Amount
Changing the selections or text in these fields allows you to generate different
types of alerts. Use these examples too see how
the fields in each set-up screen should appear for that type of alert.