The sync bar: what each state means
By the end of this article you’ll be able to read the bar across the top of the app at a glance: what the four states mean, what the numbers next to them count, and which of them ever needs you to do anything.
Where it is
The bar sits above the tabs on every screen, under the phone’s clock and battery. It never goes away and it never asks for a tap — it reports. Left to right it shows the state, then the last time the phone talked to the office, then how much work is waiting to go. On the right is the Company: you’re acting as, and — only when there is something to look at — a red badge.
The four states
- Up to date — the phone has a connection and nothing is waiting. The cloud icon has a tick. Next to it, Last synced 4 minutes ago (or seconds, hours, days) says when the last successful sync finished. Before the very first sync it reads Not synced yet.
- Syncing… — a sync is running now, with a spinner in place of the icon. Most runs finish in seconds; the first one after signing in takes longer because it downloads your work.
- Offline — the phone has no connection. The bar turns amber and says Changes will sync when you reconnect. Nothing else about the app changes, and you don’t need to do anything: the moment a signal comes back, a sync starts on its own.
- Sync error — the phone has a connection but the last sync didn’t finish. The app retries by itself, starting a few seconds later and backing off to at most every five minutes. If it clears on its own you’ll never notice; if it stays, see Sync problems.
The bar believes the phone’s radio over its own memory. With no signal it reads Offline even if the last sync went fine, and the second a connection returns it stops saying so.
The pending count
3 pending after the last-synced time means three changes made on this phone haven’t reached the office yet — a status change, a photo, a new customer, a signed quote, a cash payment, an invoice. It’s stated in the bar’s own quiet gray, not flagged, because unsent work is ordinary for an app that works offline. The count drops to nothing as the next sync goes through.
You → Sync Now shows the same number beside the same last-synced line, next to the button that sends it.
The company name
Company: with your business’s name is always there, whatever the state. If you work for more than one business it tells you whose jobs you’re looking at and whose customers you’re about to write to; change it under You → Company.
The red badge
1 to review in red on the right means the office refused or overrode something this phone sent, or a payment you recorded never reached them. Tap it — it opens Needs review, which explains each item in a sentence. Nothing is ever dropped without landing there. The badge disappears once you’ve read and dismissed the items; see When the office changed the same thing.
Two banners that can appear below the bar
- A red one — Offline too long: 2 changes will be discarded in 2 days unless you reconnect. The phone has been without the office for most of a week while holding unsent work. Find a signal before the deadline and it clears itself.
- An amber one — Downloaded data could not be opened, so it was rebuilt. Anything not yet sent may need re-entering. Restoring from the server… The phone’s local copy was damaged and has been replaced; it fills back in on the next sync. Check the jobs you worked on most recently.
Toasts
Two short messages pop up from the bottom and go away on their own:
- Synced 3 changes — a sync just delivered work from this phone. A sync that only downloaded stays silent, so you aren’t nagged every five minutes.
- Sync failed. It’ll retry automatically. — the same condition as Sync error, announced each time an attempt fails.
Good to know
- Everything in the bar is about this phone and this company. Switch company and the last-synced time and pending count switch with it.
- The bar’s state is not the job’s state. A job you completed offline reads completed on Work straight away; the bar only tells you whether the office knows yet.