Automation and Scheduled Jobs

TimelyChurch takes care of a handful of volunteer chores for you, every day, without anyone pressing a button — telling people they're scheduled, reminding them before they serve, following up with people who haven't answered, and keeping availability and serving counts up to date. This article explains each automatic task, when it happens, and which team settings control it.

All times are in your church's own time zone.

Automatic Tasks at a Glance

Each is described below.

1. "You're Scheduled" Invitations (Morning)

When you schedule someone for a date further out than their team's notice window, the invitation is held instead of sent. Every morning, TimelyChurch sends the held invitations for dates that have just come within range.

• Controlled by: Tell them this many days before they serve under When people are told they are scheduled in the team's Scheduling Settings (default 30 days; 0 = tell people the moment they're scheduled).
• Why the morning: it's the first time a volunteer hears about that date, so it lands when they can still arrange cover.
• Dates within the window are never held — scheduling someone for this Sunday still tells them right away.

2. Open-Slot Heads-Up for Leaders (Morning)

Each morning, TimelyChurch looks at events in the next 3 days that still have unfilled serving positions and gives the owning team's leaders a heads-up (in-app, and by email or Telegram), at most once a day per event. That way an open slot doesn't quietly stay open until Sunday morning.

3. Follow-Ups for Unanswered Invitations (Mid-Morning)

This is what makes silence harmless:

• Re-pings everyone still Pending on the days their team chose in Remind unconfirmed people (days before event) — default 4 and 2 days before the event; at most one ping per day.
• Expires invitations that stayed unanswered past the team's Response deadline (days after invitation) when Move on when someone does not respond is turned on. The expired invitation is handled like a decline, so the next person in rotation is invited the same morning.
• Closes fill requests whose expiry passed with nobody claiming, and tells the team leader the spot is still open.

It runs in the morning on purpose: when an invitation expires and moves on, the next person has the whole day to respond.

4. Serving Reminders (Evening)

Every evening, TimelyChurch reminds volunteers who are Pending or Confirmed for an upcoming date — once, on their team's reminder day.

• Controlled by: Send serving reminders to this team (on by default) and Send the reminder this many days before (default 2; 0 = the morning of the event) in the team's Scheduling Settings.
• When the reminder day is 2 or more days ahead, volunteers also get one final reminder the day before.
• Someone scheduled inside the reminder window (for example, on Friday for Sunday) is reminded at the next evening run.
• Reminders go by Telegram if the volunteer has linked it, otherwise by email.
• Declined assignments are never reminded, and nobody gets two reminders on the same day.

Want to remind people at another time? Use More actions → Send reminders on the event's Serving tab, or Remind N on the Schedule Grid, any time. The automatic reminder still goes out as well.

5. Sunday-Ready Check (Saturday Evening)

On Saturday evening, your church's admins get one short summary for Sunday: either "✅ You're ready for Sunday" when everything's set, or "Almost ready — a couple things to look at" with the specific items and links to fix them. It goes by Telegram if the admin has linked it, otherwise by email. Churches with no Sunday events that week get nothing.

6. Monthly Serving Count Reset (1st of the Month)

Every team member has a "times served this month" count that auto-fill uses to respect monthly limits (Max Times Per Month on the team, and each volunteer's own limit). Each time someone serves, the count goes up — in the month of the event, so confirming someone today for a date next month counts toward next month.

Just after midnight on the 1st, TimelyChurch starts any count that still belongs to an earlier month back at 0. (Auto-fill also resets a stale count whenever it notices one, so quiet teams stay correct too.) Anyone whose count is already current is left alone.

7. Recurring Unavailability (Sunday at Midnight)

Volunteers can set repeating unavailability patterns like "every other Sunday" or "1st Sunday of the month" — see Recurring Unavailability. Every Sunday at midnight, TimelyChurch turns each active pattern into concrete blocked dates for the next 3 months:

• Only dates that aren't already blocked are added; existing dates are left alone.
• Each generated date carries the pattern's reason (or a default like "Recurring: 1st Sunday of Month") so leaders know why it's blocked.

Editing a pattern refreshes its dates right away, so a volunteer doesn't have to wait until Sunday for a change to take effect.

If Messages Aren't Arriving

• Check that the team hasn't turned off Send serving reminders to this team.
• Check the team's Tell them this many days before they serve — a date further out than that isn't announced yet.
• Check that the volunteer has an email address on file or has linked Telegram. Someone with neither can't be reached.
• Remember that declined and removed assignments are never reminded.

Related Reading

• Volunteer Notifications -- the messages these tasks send and the accept/decline flow
• Recurring Unavailability -- the volunteer-facing patterns the Sunday task reads
• Managing Volunteer Availability -- how monthly counts and blocked dates feed into auto-fill
• Cascade Auto-Fill, Sub Invites, and Out-of-Office Badges -- what happens after a decline or an expired invitation