When you've used 75% of your SMS allowance, you'll receive a warning via email.
There's no need to panic, but we'd recommend that if this is a regular occurrence, you should look to upgrade your contract if you're spilling over each month.
The message will read:
Dear Celayix Client (Your Client ID),
You have exceeded 75% of your SMS message allowance of 25000 for August which has 24 days remaining. Please contact Celayix support if you need to increase your SMS message allowance as overage charges will apply once you exceed 100% of your SMS message allowance. We can be contacted by replying to this email.
The Celayix Support Team
In this article, we're going to look into the following on Celayix SMS Usage Warnings:
Celayix SMS Usage Warning
Monitoring your SMS usage
Adjusting your SMS usage allowance package
Receiving a Celayix SMS Usage Warning
If you've received an email like below, then it means you're either close to reaching your limit, or have exceeded it.
When does your SMS allowance reset?
Your SMS allowance will reset on the 1st of every month, unless there's a different agreement in your contract.
We highly encourage that you check your contract if you're unsure.
How is your SMS usage being used?
Although using SMS can be very useful, we strongly recommend taking advantage of sending emails or in-app messages as a free alternative. But if you've purchased a package and you wish to use SMS as a prime communication method, then it's important you know how your SMS' are being used.
Let's look at the most common ways your SMS' are being sent:
You're sending Team Xpress invitations using the SMS option, as a method of employees activating their account.
An eClock Alert is sent to the employee when they do not check in, check in late, forget to do a safety check, or fail to take action relating to a check in/out of a shift.
A Notify Employees notification is sent to them from Schedule Xpress.
Shift Change Acknowledgements are sent to remind employees that they have shifts that need to be acknowledged. If these acknowledgements are turned on in your system and employees do not acknowledge their shifts, then they'll continue to be sent reminders until they take action.
Shift Confirmation Reminders are sent when the employee is required to confirm that they will work a shift.
Shift bidding notifications are sent to make the employee aware of Shift bidding invitations are available to bid on, and the result of any shift bids.
The results of Time off requests, such as whether they're approved or declined.
Employees will only receive SMS message if they've consented to do so in their Team Xpress app. The way you can check is if you head to Manage people > Choose an employee profile > Contact section.
Note: An employee must actively give consent to receiving SMS from you, or they won't be sent.
Message units
Each of the above will use one or more SMS units.
One unit is 140 characters. Therefore, any message that exceeds 140 characters will be calculated at more than one unit and will be surplus to an overage charge.
Let's look at how you can monitor your SMS usage.
Monitoring your SMS usage
Other than being sent an SMS usage warning, eTime Xpress provides a way for you to track your SMS usage. Head to eTime Xpress > Administration > SMS Log Viewer.
The SMS Log Viewer is a feature that gives the User a precise number of SMS units that we're sent over a chosen date range.
For example, if we we're mid-month and wanted to check our usage, then we could select a date range, and press the green refresh button.
This will give you a total number of units sent in the period, and will break down who the message was sent to, when the message was sent, and what type of message it was.
Adjusting your SMS allowance package
If you're looking to adjust your SMS allowance, then Contact Support for the best available option to suit your needs!