Ratio Email Alerts

Pro’s chargeback ratio email alerts are the daily check that emails you before any card brand’s ratio crosses its network threshold. The alerts are deduplicated per brand per calendar month, so you never get spammed for a brand that’s been red for weeks — you get one alert when it first crosses, and the next alert in the new month if it’s still red. This page covers how the alerts work, what they tell you, and how to configure them.

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How the Daily Check Runs #

Once per day at a configurable time (default 9 AM in your store’s timezone), a scheduled action runs through these steps:

1. Compute the current month’s ratio for each card brand
2. Compare each brand’s ratio against the configured warn threshold (default 70% of brand monitoring threshold)
3. For each brand at or above warn threshold:
   • Check whether an alert has already been sent for this brand this month
   • If yes, skip
   • If no, send an alert and record the dedup entry
4. Log the check result for audit

The dedup record is keyed by brand + calendar month, so on the 1st of each month the dedup resets and a fresh alert can fire.

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What the Alert Email Contains #

Section	Content
Subject	“[TrustLens] {Brand} chargeback ratio approaching threshold”
Greeting	Store name, alert date
Headline	Brand, current ratio, threshold, percentage of threshold
Context	Total disputes vs total orders in current month
Recent disputes	5 most recent disputes for the affected brand
Recommended actions	Concrete steps to take — review recent disputes, generate Evidence Reports, enable auto-block
Footer	Link to Chargeback Monitor, unsubscribe / configure

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Configuration #

Settings: TrustLens → Settings → Reports → Chargeback Ratio Alerts.

Setting	Default	Description
Enable alerts	On	Master toggle
Recipients	Admin email	Comma-separated list of email addresses
Daily check time	09:00	Time of day (store timezone) when the check runs
Warn threshold percent	70%	Inherited from Chargebacks settings — the trigger threshold
Suppress for low volume	On	Skip alerts when total monthly disputes < 5 (avoids alerts on stores too small to be in real monitoring danger)

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The Dedup Behavior #

Dedup is keyed by (brand, year-month). So:

• Visa crosses threshold on March 5 → alert sent, dedup recorded
• Visa still above threshold on March 6, March 7, … → no further alerts
• April 1 — dedup resets — if Visa still above threshold, new alert fires

If you fix the issue and a brand drops back below threshold, then climbs again later in the same month, no second alert fires for that brand-month. This is intentional — once you know about a problem, daily reminders aren’t useful. The first-of-month reset gives you fresh visibility each month.

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Why Per-Brand Per-Month #

Card networks evaluate ratios per brand per month. Alerts on the same cadence give you actionable visibility: when you receive an alert, you know a specific brand has a specific issue in a specific month.

Alternatives considered and rejected:

• Daily alerts regardless of dedup: Too spammy. Quickly trained users to ignore.
• One alert per quarter: Too infrequent. Could leave a store red for weeks before notification.
• Blended single-alert: Hides brand-specific issues. Defeats the per-brand value of Pro.

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What to Do When You Get One #

1. Open the alert email and read the brand and ratio
2. Click through to the Chargeback Monitor
3. Review recent disputes for that brand — what reasons are dominating?
4. For friendly-fraud / fraudulent reason codes: generate Dispute Evidence Reports for any open disputes
5. For product-not-received or product-quality reasons: investigate fulfillment / product issues
6. Enable or tighten auto-block-after-N-lost-disputes
7. Set up daily monitoring of new disputes for the remainder of the month

Don’t wait for the next month’s alert to confirm the issue resolved — check the per-brand ratio daily until trend reverses.

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If You’re Not Receiving Alerts #

Common causes:

• WP-Cron not firing. Some hosts disable WP-Cron; you need a real cron job. The daily ratio check runs on the trustlens/chargeback_alert_check WP-Cron event — confirm WP-Cron is firing (for example with a Cron-events viewer plugin) or set up a real server cron job hitting wp-cron.php.
• Email delivery issue. WordPress’s wp_mail() is unreliable on many hosts. Install an SMTP plugin and verify deliverability.
• Already deduped. If you’re below the warn threshold for the month, no alert fires. Verify your actual ratio.
• Low-volume suppression. If you have fewer than 5 disputes in the month, the suppression filter kicks in. Disable suppression if you want alerts on small dispute counts.

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Multiple Recipients #

The recipient field accepts a comma-separated list. Useful for distributing alerts across:

• Operations email inbox
• Fraud team lead
• Finance / compliance for monitoring-program-related alerts
• Owner / leadership for high-severity escalations

All recipients receive the same email. There’s no per-recipient filtering in the alert system — for differentiated alerts, use the automation engine instead.

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Audit Log #

Every check result and every sent alert is logged. The log shows:

• Check timestamp
• Ratios computed for each brand
• Threshold comparisons
• Alerts sent (with recipient list)
• Alerts suppressed (and why)

The log is visible in TrustLens → Settings → Reports → Chargeback Ratio Alerts → History. Useful for confirming the check is running even when no alerts are being sent.

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Alerts vs Slack #

The ratio alerts are email-only. For Slack notifications, build an automation rule on the Chargeback Filed (or Dispute Recorded) trigger with a Fire-webhook action pointed at a Slack incoming webhook — that fires the moment a dispute lands, which is the leading indicator the ratio is about to move. See Triggers Reference.