What is the bell icon for?

The bell is on every page. Its badge is not "things that happened"; it is the number of items waiting for someone on your team to do something. Acting on the item where it lives clears it.

What lands there

Needs action (counted in the badge):

• A client message you have not read.
• A new online client waiting for review (when you review new clients before their first visit).
• An online booking request waiting for approval (when auto-accept is off).
• A vaccination document a client uploaded, waiting for you to approve or reject.
• A late cancellation from the portal, until you mark it handled.
• A day your store hit its texting cap.

Activity (shown, not counted): a waitlist offer currently out with a client, an on-time online cancellation from the last week, and similar things worth knowing but not owed a response.

Steps

1. Click the bell.
2. Pick a tab: All, Bookings, Payments, Messages, Alerts or Woof. Each tab shows how many of its items need action.
3. Inside a tab, Needs action sits above Activity.
4. Click a row. A message opens the conversation, a booking request opens the Requests tab, a vaccine upload opens the pet, a late cancellation offers Mark handled right there.

The feed loads when you open the panel and when a page loads. There is no "mark all read": an item leaves the list when you have dealt with it.

Tabs that look empty

Payments and Woof are empty until there is something real to put in them. An empty tab is a true empty tab, never a placeholder.