You get a text from a customer, or a teammate approves a quote out in the field, and your phone buzzes. That's push notifications — and it's really two connected things living in the mobile app: a bell-style activity feed you check inside the app (Notifications, reached from the bell/badge on the Today tab or a card in the More menu), and the underlying device-level push registration that lets SalesThumb wake your phone even when the app is closed. This article covers what's on the Notifications screen, how the app registers your phone for push alerts, and — because most shops run more than one location — exactly what happens to that registration when you switch your active shop.
The Notifications screen
Open Notifications and you get a single scrolling list, newest first, pulling together everything that's happened recently across your shop:
- Quotes — created, sent, viewed, and approved
- Invoices — created, sent, and paid
- Appointments — booked, completed, no-show, and canceled
- Payments — received, with the amount and method
- Messages — inbound texts from customers
Anything from the last 24 hours (and any inbound text your team hasn't opened yet) shows a small unread dot on the left edge, and a line at the top of the list tells you how many are new. The list refreshes on its own about once a minute while you have it open, and you can pull down to refresh it manually too.
Tapping any row takes you to the thing it's about — a quote or invoice opens straight to that record, a booking notification drops you on the Schedule tab, and an inbound text opens the conversation with that customer (or the Messages tab if the text couldn't be matched to a customer on file).
If nothing has happened yet, you'll see an empty state rather than a blank screen — the app is telling you there's no activity, not that something failed to load.
Getting real push alerts on your phone
The Notifications screen above is something you check; it's separate from the notifications that pop up on your phone's lock screen or notification tray even when SalesThumb isn't open. Those require the app to register your device.
The first time you sign in on a phone, the app asks the operating system for notification permission (the standard iOS/Android prompt). If you allow it, the app gets a unique push token for that device and sends it to SalesThumb's servers, tied to your account and whichever shop is currently active. That registration is what lets the server reach your device directly — for things like an inbound message, a real-time Walkie push-to-talk alert, or an upcoming appointment reminder — without you having the app open.
A few things follow directly from how that registration works:
- It only happens on a real phone or tablet. A simulator, an emulator, or the web version of the app can't produce a usable push token, so no registration happens there.
- If you decline the permission prompt (or it's off in your phone's system settings), the app simply skips registration — the in-app Notifications feed above still works fine, you just won't get alerts outside the app.
- Registration happens automatically, without you doing anything for it — right after you sign in, and again each time you fully close and reopen the app. Repeating it is harmless: it just refreshes the existing record for your device rather than creating a duplicate.
What switching your active shop does to it
If you work across more than one shop, switching your active shop from the Profile tab's shop switcher does more than change which shop's data you're looking at — it also re-registers your device's push token under the newly active shop. That's deliberate: without it, a multi-shop staffer's phone would keep receiving shop-scoped push alerts for whichever shop happened to be active back when the app first launched, not the one they're actually standing in right now.
Switching shops does not remove your device's registration from the shop you switched away from — it adds a registration for the new one. The only action that clears your device's push registration everywhere is signing out (see below).
Signing out clears your device's push registration
Both "Sign out" and "Sign out of all devices" on the Profile tab de-register this device's push token before your session is cleared — across every shop it was registered under, not just the one that was active. This matters most on a shared or handed-down device: without it, a phone passed to the next employee would keep quietly delivering the previous person's job alerts and messages after they've signed out.
One thing to keep in mind: this clears the token for whichever device you're actually tapping the button on. If you use "Sign out of all devices" from a different phone — say, because the original one is lost — that immediately cuts off the missing phone's ability to sign in or reach shop data, but it doesn't reach out to that phone directly, so its own push registration isn't guaranteed to clear right away. See the FAQ below for what to do if a device is genuinely lost rather than just being handed off to someone else.
Things to know
- Notification permission is requested through your phone's own system prompt — SalesThumb can't turn it on for you, and if it was denied you'll need to enable it from your device's Settings app for the SalesThumb app.
- Push tokens only exist on physical devices; simulators, emulators, and the web app never register for push.
- The in-app Notifications feed works whether or not you've granted push permission — it's a pull, not a push, so it doesn't depend on device registration at all.
- For quotes specifically, the feed uses whichever status change happened most recently — created, sent, viewed, or approved — to decide both the headline and whether it counts as new. A quote that was viewed a week ago and approved five minutes ago shows up as a fresh "Quote approved" notification, not a stale one. Invoices, appointments, and payments work a little differently: their headline always reflects the current status, but whether they show as new is based on when the record was first created — so, for example, an invoice created several days ago that just got marked paid keeps its original spot in the list and won't show up as unread.
- On Android, real-time Walkie alerts use a separate, higher-priority notification channel than everything else, so your phone's system settings let you control Walkie notifications independently from general alerts like messages and appointment reminders.
- If registering the push token fails (a dropped connection, for example), it isn't treated as a hard error — the app just tries again the next time you open the app, sign in, or switch shops.
Frequently asked questions
Q: I don't see any push notifications on my phone. What's wrong? A: First check that you actually allowed notification permission when the app asked — if you tapped "Don't Allow," go into your phone's system Settings and enable notifications for the SalesThumb app. If permission is on and you're still not seeing anything, try fully signing out and back in so the app re-registers your device.
Q: Does the Notifications screen itself send push alerts? A: No. The Notifications screen is an in-app feed you check when the app is open — it refreshes on a timer and on pull-to-refresh. Push alerts that reach your phone outside the app are a separate mechanism tied to your device's push token registration.
Q: I work at two shops. Will I get push alerts for both, or just the one I'm currently viewing? A: Switching your active shop registers your device for that shop, but it doesn't remove the registration from the shop you switched away from — so a device that's been active in more than one shop can keep receiving alerts for more than one. If you only want alerts for the shop you're currently working in, the reliable way to reset that is to sign out and back in.
Q: I handed my old phone to a new hire. Will they see my notifications? A: Not if you signed out on that phone before handing it over — either "Sign out" or "Sign out of all devices" de-registers that specific device's push token as part of signing out, so it stops receiving your alerts right away. A lost or stolen phone is a different situation: if you no longer have it in hand and use "Sign out of all devices" from a different device, that ends the missing phone's session immediately — it can no longer sign in or reach shop data — but push alerts don't require an active session to arrive, so that action by itself doesn't reach out and clear the missing phone's own push registration. If a device is genuinely lost or stolen, treat locking it out as the first step, and loop in your shop owner or admin — removing you as a team member for that shop does clear the device's push registration for it.
Q: Why does an inbound text show as unread even though it happened more than a day ago? A: Text messages use a different rule than everything else on the feed — they stay marked unread until someone actually opens that conversation, regardless of how much time has passed, rather than aging off after 24 hours like quotes, invoices, and payments do.
Q: Can I turn off just one type of alert, like appointment reminders, without turning off everything? A: On Android, Walkie alerts sit on their own notification channel that you can mute independently from your phone's system settings. Other alert types share a single channel, so muting notifications for the SalesThumb app affects them together.