Schedules: run only when it matters

One-off and daily windows, how Start and Stop fit in, and what it saves.

A monitor spends Firm credits for every hour it runs, whether or not anything is on sale. A schedule tells it when to run, so it watches the hours that matter and sits quietly the rest of the time. Schedules are on every plan, and a monitor with no schedule works exactly as it always has: it runs until you stop it.

The two kinds of window

Open a monitor and find the Schedule panel under its status card. You can add as many windows as you need; the monitor runs whenever any of them is open.

One-off window — a start and a stop, each a date and a time, for example Sat 19 Sep 09:00 – Sun 20 Sep 23:00. Leave the stop empty and it runs from the start until you stop it. Once its stop time has passed the window is marked ended and does nothing more; delete it whenever you like.
Daily window — the days of the week to run on, and a time to start and stop, for example Every Fri, Sat 18:00–23:30. A stop time earlier than the start runs past midnight: Every Fri 22:00–02:00 starts on Friday night and stops at 02:00 on Saturday. The day you tick is the day the window opens.

The panel always says what happens next, for example Next: starts Fri 18:00 or Next: stops today 23:30, and a scheduled monitor's card carries a small line such as Scheduled · next start Fri 18:00. When a window opens or closes, the monitor's activity says so: Started by schedule, Stopped by schedule.

Times and clock changes

Times are entered and shown in your own time zone, which is UK time (Europe/London) unless your account says otherwise; the panel names the zone under the list. A daily window follows the clock on the wall, so 18:00 is still 18:00 in the week the clocks go forward and the week they go back.

One corner case, for completeness: on the night the clocks go forward, the hour from 01:00 to 02:00 does not exist. A time inside it moves an hour later (01:30 becomes 02:30), and a window that this leaves with nothing in it, such as 01:30–02:10, does not run that night.

Start and Stop still work

Your button wins until the next time a window opens or closes.

Stop inside a window and it stays stopped for the rest of that window. It starts again when the next window opens.
Start outside a window and it runs until the next scheduled stop. If the next window opens before that, it simply keeps running through it.
Add a window that is already open and the monitor starts within a few seconds. Delete the window that is open and it stops, unless another window is open too.
Delete every window and the monitor is back to Start and Stop by hand, left running or stopped exactly as it was.

The panel explains when your button is holding it, for example Stopped during a window, so it stays stopped until the next window opens, Sat 18:00.

Billing, credits and slots

A schedule never gets round a pause. If your subscription is not active, or the monitor is on Firm credits and your balance is zero, a window that opens does not start it. The activity says the window opened while the monitor was paused, and as soon as the pause clears — you top up, or the payment goes through — it starts by itself if the window is still open. If the window has closed by then, it waits for the next one.

A scheduled monitor still uses its slot all the time, open or closed, the same as a stopped one does. See What a slot is.

What it saves

In our testing a Ticketmaster UK monitor used about 6 credits an hour per event at the default interval. So:

Left running all day: about 144 credits a day.
With a five-hour evening window, say 18:00–23:00: about 30 credits that day, and nothing on the days it does not open.

A football club monitor spends credits keeping its sign-ins signed in whether or not anything is on sale — about 6 an hour for two sign-ins on most clubs, about 18 on the clubs with a second check — so a window saves it the same way, and a club monitor left running overnight is the commonest surprise on a balance. Most club releases happen in known windows.

A monitor on your own captcha key is not charged credits, but a schedule still keeps it from using your proxies and your key when you are not interested. Credits and auto top-up has the rest.

A practical habit: give each event a window that opens a little before the time you expect tickets to appear and closes when you would stop checking by hand. It is easier to widen a window than to explain a surprise on the balance.

← Credits and auto top-up Reading an alert card →

Something here wrong or missing? Tell us, and we will fix the page rather than just answer the message.