A billing run works through its plan without anyone watching it directly, so Rhythm reports progress at three points: when the plan is ready to review, when action counts are available, and when the run finishes or fails. This article explains what each signal means and when a run can stop without sending one.
When the Plan Is Ready to Review
After a billing run finishes planning, Rhythm emails the notification address on the run to say the plan is ready for review. If the run has no notification address, Rhythm does not send an email, and the run itself does not show that this step was skipped.
The email does not include counts or a list of the changes the run plans to make. It only confirms that the plan exists, so you still need to open the run in the Console to review what it will do.
If that email fails to send, such as when your account’s notification templates are not available, the run fails right after the plan is saved. Rhythm does not send a failure report in that specific case, so check this if a run appears to stop after planning.
What the Action Counts Tell You
A billing run tracks how many actions it has for each type of work and how many of those actions succeeded. These counts help you understand the shape of the run’s plan or results from the run’s page.
The counts are reliable only after the run finishes counting them. If execution stops partway through the action list, the final counting step does not run, so the counts can look stale or incomplete compared with what actually happened.
When a Run Finishes Successfully
After execution reaches the end of the planned action list, Rhythm marks the run completed and emails a success report. In this context, completed means the run reached the end of its action loop, not that every individual action succeeded.
Tip
A completed run is not always a fully successful run. If you need to confirm every action went through, check the run’s action counts instead of relying only on its completed status.
If the success-report email fails to send, Rhythm marks the run failed even though its work already finished. Do not assume a failed billing run means its actions were not carried out; check the action counts before you re-run anything.
When a Run Fails
If an earlier step fails, such as planning, refreshing, or a report step with its own error handling, Rhythm marks the run in error and emails a failure report. The run’s steps do not retry automatically, so even a brief network interruption can fail a run outright.
When a Run Can Go Quiet Without a Report
Not every failure creates a report. If an action inside the execution loop fails in a way its own error handling does not catch, or a report step fails the same way, Rhythm does not mark the run in error and does not send a failure email.
Because the run does not time out or retry automatically, a run that fails this way can appear to stay running indefinitely, with no notification that anything went wrong.
Warning
If a billing run’s status has not changed in longer than you expect and no email arrived either way, do not assume it is still working normally. Open the run and check its actions directly; a run can stop mid-execution without sending any report.
Related
For how a run is built, scheduled, and reviewed before it reaches this point, see the related articles below on creating, finding, and refreshing a billing run’s plan.