In VAT4U, some actions take a bit longer to complete—things like importing expenses, running compliance checks or performing batch actions. These are important jobs that happen behind the scenes, but without a way to keep track of them, it’s easy to feel unsure about what’s happening. Did the import start? Is it stuck? Should you click the button again? That’s where the Running Jobs Report comes in. It gives you a clear, real-time overview of all the background tasks in progress, so you’re never left guessing.

Background jobs, or long-running tasks, are operations in VAT4U that generally take over 30 seconds to complete. These include tasks such as smart checks, batch actions, and data imports that run in the background. Each job can consist of one or multiple actions. Actions are single units of work that make up a background job, such as performing an OCR scan on a single expense or conducting a compliance check for a single expense. You can find this report under the Reports section on the left-side menu:

Each job entry in the report includes several key details. 

The Job ID acts as a unique identifier, allowing easy tracking of individual tasks. Besides this ID, the Title describes the type of job, such as "Export Expenses Job," "Keyword Search Job," "Import Expenses," or "Smart AI Data Retrieval," giving a clear indication of the task's purpose. The Owner column identifies the user who started the job, so you can easily see who initiated each process.

The Status of a job shows its current state: it may display as "Waiting" if the job is in queue, "Running" when actively processing, "Failed" if an error interrupted the process, "Complete" if finished successfully, or "Suspended" if paused manually. This quick status reference helps you know instantly where each job stands.

To give you more detail on each job's progress, the Stats column breaks down its progress in numbers. This includes counts of actions that are still "Waiting," those "Running" actively, and those already "Complete." It also shows the total number of actions initiated within the job, helping gauge overall completion at a glance.

In the Options column, you’ll find various management tools. Here, you can stop a job to pause all further actions or choose to view recent log entries with "Show Log" to get a live look at the last 100 lines of the job log. Alternatively, you can download the "Complete Log" for a full history of the job’s progression, which is especially useful for troubleshooting.

When initiating batch actions that require more time, it’s best to avoid re-clicking the action button to see if the job has started. Instead, open the Running Jobs Report to view real-time updates on the job’s progress. This approach keeps the system running smoothly and avoids unnecessary load.