The Alerts page (found on the top left of the screen) will give you a rolling 7-day view of the changes made to bills to your bill sheets and regulations in your regulation sheets. You can also sign up for daily email alerts in the Alerts tab of every bill or regulation sheet. You will then receive one email, early every morning, summarising the changes made to bills and regulations the previous day. Read more about alerts here.
Afternoon Alerts are a second set of alerts, sent in the afternoon. They are useful if you want to track legislation in a fast moving state and need to know, in the afternoon, what changes have happened that morning. You can choose which bill sheets you'd like the second set of alerts for and we'll send them out around 4:30pm (Eastern).
Note: Your morning alerts will stay the same - that is, your morning alert will still be a full summary of the previous day, it will not be limited to activity since the last afternoon alert.
To make the afternoon alerts option available on your bill sheet alerts tab, you will need to purchase an Afternoon Alerts subscription. Check our pricing page for the current price. This covers as many alerts as you'd like to set up, for all the users in the account. Note that only the company administrator can add subscriptions.
Here's a video showing step by step how to purchase an afternoon alerts subscription. To add the subscription simply log in, choose "Manage Account" from the account menu, and go to the "Subscriptions" tab, as seen below:
Click the "Add Subscription" button to see the subscription options then click the red "Add" button under Afternoon Alerts as seen below. Finish checking out and you'll be presented with a pro-rated price based on your subscription term. You can pay now by credit card or change the purchase type to invoice and pay by check or come back and pay by credit card later, as with any other purchase.
Now you have access to afternoon alerts! Simple open up your bill sheet, go to the alerts tab, and check the Send Afternoon Alerts box. Your afternoon alert will use the same activity settings as your morning alert. Don't forget to click Save after you check the box!
Remember, alerts are by user, by bill sheet. Each user can decide, for each bill sheet, if they need to get a second email in the afternoon with updates on the latest activity for the bills on that specific bill sheet. The afternoon alerts will also update your bill sheet, adding any new bills that have been introduced since the morning alert went out.
Note: Your bill sheets will always display the most up to date record of changes to bills - new versions, votes, hearings and so on. Our data update throughout the day and can be seen in bill sheets usually within an hour of the state website publishing it. You can always ask a bill sheet to check for new bills by opening it, going to the query tab, and clicking Save. See this post for information on data update frequency.
It is true for any bill sheet, and whether or not you've purchased an Afternoon Alerts subscription.