Getting help

Read the guides

Start with the Administrator Help Guides. Each guide names the screen it covers and the labels exactly as you see them.

Help Centre in your account menu opens, in a new tab, the guide for the page you are on. On a page no guide covers, it opens the Administrator Help Guides. Open the account menu from your name at the foot of the sidebar, or at the right of the top bar on a phone or tablet.

Tell us whether a Help page helped

Each Help Centre page ends with Was this helpful?.

Select Yes or No.
Add a comment in Anything to add? (optional) if you want to say what was missing or unclear. It can be up to 1000 characters.
Select Send, or Skip to send your answer without a comment.

Your answer goes to the Backed team with the name of the page and nothing about who you are, so we can't reply. Please don't include personal details. If you need an answer, use Feedback instead.

Send feedback from any page

Feedback in your account menu, under Help Centre, opens Send feedback in a window over the page. Use it to tell the Backed team what confused you, what broke, or what you wish a screen did. Backed notes the page you are on. It appears only when it is turned on for your organisation.

Open your account menu and select Feedback.
Choose what kind of feedback it is: Confusing, Broken or Idea.
Write Your message.
Tick Include a screenshot of this page if a picture helps. Your browser asks what to share: choose this tab. Only what is on screen is captured.
Select Send feedback. You see Thanks. Your feedback has gone to the team.

See what your organisation has sent

Settings > Feedback lists what people in your organisation have sent from Feedback, newest first: when it was filed, who sent it, its category, the page, the message and any screenshot. Filter it by Category. Only administrators see this list, and only while feedback is turned on for your organisation.

Notices from the Backed team

From time to time the Backed team posts a notice at the top of every page: news about the System, or Planned maintenance with the times it is due. A maintenance notice may say the System will be read-only or unavailable for a while; Administrators are usually emailed it too.

Select the ✕ beside a notice to dismiss it once you have read it: it stays gone for you, in every organisation you belong to. Other people still see it until they dismiss it themselves.

When part of Backed is unavailable

Backed relies on a few outside services. If one of them is down, only what needs it stops working, and the message says which one. Everything else keeps working, and anything already saved — drafts, answers, settings — is safe. Try again in a few minutes.

The message starts	What is affected
`Email can't be sent right now`	Sending email. Nothing was sent.
`Text messages can't be sent right now`	Sending text messages, such as sign-in codes.
`Documents can't be created right now`	Creating PDFs and other documents.
`Uploaded files can't be checked for viruses right now`	New uploads wait until they are checked.
`Search isn't available right now`	The search box.
`Slack can't be reached right now`	Posting to Slack. Nothing was posted.
`Your accounting system can't be reached right now`	Reading from or sending to your accounting system.

If the message stays for more than an hour, send feedback with the page and the time.

When a page says something went wrong

If a page fails, it says Something went wrong and shows a Reference: a code that names exactly that failure, so support can find it in seconds. Select Try again first. If it keeps happening:

Select Copy reference beside the code. It changes to Reference copied.
Send the reference to support — Message support, or support@backed.giving — with what you were doing and roughly when.

Check the service status on the same page opens the public status page, which says whether the problem is everyone's.

During planned maintenance

While a maintenance window is in progress you may meet one of two things:

This service is down for planned maintenance: the page gives way to the maintenance page, and nothing can be opened or saved until it is over. Select Try again once the time has passed. The sign-in pages stay open, so a platform administrator can still sign in.
Changes are paused for planned maintenance: a notice appears at the top of the page when a change can't be saved. The page stays as it was, with whatever you had typed, and you can still read everything. Save again once the time has passed.

Both say when the window should end, in your own time zone, and link Check the service status. Anything already saved is safe. The Planned maintenance notice at the top of every page announces each window beforehand.

Contact Backed support

Support is in your account menu on every page, under Feedback. Open your name at the foot of the sidebar, or at the right of the top bar on a phone or tablet, and select Support to open Get help in a window over the page. Select Close support to go back to the page. On a phone, Get help fills the screen. Get help shows:

the Backed support email address, support@backed.giving;
the hours we answer: Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm Sydney time, by email. Outside those hours the panel says We’re offline now. Leave a message and we’ll reply on the next business day.
Message support, a short form that sends your message to the Backed support team;
Your messages, the messages you have sent and our replies to them.

To send a message:

Open your account menu and select Support.
Enter a Subject and your Message. Say what you were doing and what happened; Backed notes the page you are on.
Select Send message. You see Message sent. We’ve emailed you a copy. and your message is listed under Your messages.

When we reply, the reply appears under your message in Your messages, marked Support, and we email it to you as well. An open panel checks for a reply every 30 seconds, so you can leave it open and keep working. Until we reply, the message says Waiting for a reply from support.

You can send up to five messages an hour. Support is by email only: there is no phone line.