Hourly

Get warned when your balance drops below $20,000

You get one email when checking falls under your floor, and another only after it has recovered and dropped again.

Runs: Hourly
Apps: Mercury
AI: Not needed
Access: read-only token

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: check my Mercury checking balance every hour and email me if it drops below $20,000. Don't email again until it has gone back above.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

Add to ChatGPT Add to Claude

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A company with $20,000 in checking is one large vendor payment or payroll run away from an overdraft. Founders often discover a low balance only when a payment is declined, because the bank app is not something they open daily. By then, a failed payroll or a bounced rent payment has already caused damage that cash on hand could have prevented with one transfer from savings.

Every hour, ClickRuntime reads your Mercury account balances and compares checking with the threshold you set, for example $20,000. When the balance falls below it, you receive one alert, and no more alerts until the balance has recovered above the line, so you are warned without being nagged.

It is useful for startups and small businesses that keep a thin buffer in checking and move money from savings when needed.

What you get out of it

Overdrafts and declined payments are avoided
A warning before the balance runs dry gives you time to transfer funds. That prevents bounced payments, late fees and the stress of an emergency call to the bank. It is a small signal that avoids a big problem.
Payroll is protected
Payroll is the last bill you want to miss. Knowing the balance is low before a pay run lets you top up the account, so employees receive their money on the day they expect it.
Cash discipline without a spreadsheet
The threshold acts as a simple rule for how much buffer you keep. If you cross it regularly, that is a signal to change your spending or your funding plan.
One alert per dip
Alerting once until recovery keeps the message meaningful. You will not get an email every hour while the balance stays low, which would teach you to ignore it. That keeps the signal strong whenever it does arrive in your inbox.
Faster response than a monthly review
Watching the account hourly turns a monthly cash review into near real-time awareness. Surprises such as a large annual subscription charge are noticed when they hit. Large charges that used to surprise you show up while there is still time to react.
Better timing for savings transfers
Knowing when checking dips lets you move money only when needed. The rest stays in savings, where it may earn interest, instead of sitting idle as a large cushion that does nothing for the business.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every hour, ClickRuntime checks the available balance in your Mercury checking account.
If it has dropped below $20,000, you get an email with the balance.
You are not emailed again while it stays low. Once the balance goes back above the floor, the next drop triggers a new alert.

Before it runs live

Connect Mercury

What you get

RunsHourly

Get warned when your balance drops below $20,000today, 9:00Succeeded

Email · Low balanceMercury balance low: $17,342.10 Mercury Checking ••4321 is below $20,000.

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Mercury steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

low_balance_alert_mercury.pyexample

from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state, notify

ACCOUNT_ID = "your-checking-account-id"
FLOOR = 20000

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    acct = http.get(f"https://api.mercury.com/api/v1/account/{ACCOUNT_ID}",
                    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.secret('MERCURY_TOKEN')}"}).json()
    balance = acct["availableBalance"]
    if balance < FLOOR and not state.get("low"):
        notify.email_me(f"Mercury balance low: ${balance:,.2f}", f"{acct['name']} is below ${FLOOR:,}.")
        state.set("low", True)
    elif balance >= FLOOR and state.get("low"):
        state.set("low", False)  # recovered, alert again next time it drops
    return {"balance": balance}

FAQ

Common questions

Which account does it watch?

It reads the balance of the Mercury account you choose, typically checking. If you hold several accounts, you can set a separate threshold for each one and name the account in the alert. Each account can have its own limit.

What happens when the balance goes back above the limit?

The alert is re-armed. If the balance later drops below the limit again, you will get a new alert. Until then the check continues quietly every hour without sending anything. Recovery is judged against the same threshold you set.

Can I use a different amount?

Yes, the $20,000 figure is only an example. Tell your AI assistant the amount that makes sense for your payroll and bills, review the change it proposes, and approve it so the new threshold applies.

What permissions does it need?

read-only token. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it checks. Checks that find nothing new and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Every 15 minutes