Connecting Etropo to Slack

With the integration between Etropo and Slack you can stay on top of your budget actuals by sending monthly reminders to your marketing team, enabling quick updates directly from Slack, and chatting with your budget data using AI Budget Buddy. You’ll also receive notifications when teammates mention you in budget item comments.

Setup

There are two parts to the setup process:

1. Admin Setup: An administrator must first connect the integration for the entire organization:

   • Navigate to Integrations Tab 
   • Click “Connect”
   • Authorize the app for your workspace
   • The integration settings tab shows your connected Slack workspace and displays a table of team members who have connected the integration, helping you see who will receive notifications from Etropo

   

2. Individual Authorization: Each team member must authorize the integration to receive notifications:

   • Each team member should navigate to the Notifications tab in their profile settings
   • Click “Authorize Slack” to allow the integration to send them direct messages
   • Once connected, you’ll receive a welcome message in Slack confirming the setup and explaining available features

Important: Without individual authorization, team members will not receive any Slack notifications (monthly actuals reminders or comment mentions), even if the organization-wide integration is enabled.

AI Budget Buddy in Slack

AI Budget Buddy is available directly in Slack, letting you manage your marketing budget through natural conversation. You can mention @etropo in any channel or send a direct message to the bot.

What You Can Do

AI Budget Buddy in Slack has the same capabilities as the web app:

• Search and explore — find line items by name, category, or description (e.g., “show me all social media line items”)
• Analyze variance — compare planned vs. actual spending across budgets, categories, or specific line items
• Add line items — create new budget items with optional planned/actual values
• Update values — set or change planned and actual amounts across multiple line items and months
• Update properties — change status, owner, cost center, category, name, or currency in bulk (e.g., “approve all draft items in Paid Media”)
• Create categories — add new budget categories with optional hierarchy
• Get product help — ask questions about Etropo features and get answers from our documentation

All write operations (adding items, updating values, changing properties) require your confirmation before executing.

Conversations and Threads

AI Budget Buddy maintains conversation context within Slack threads. When you reply in a thread, the bot remembers the previous messages (up to 50 messages per thread), so you can have multi-turn conversations like:

You: Show me all line items over budget in Q1
Bot: Here are 5 line items that exceeded their planned amounts…
You: Update the status on those to “flagged”
Bot: I’ll update the status on these 5 items to flagged. Confirm?

Permissions

AI Budget Buddy respects the same permission model as the web app — you can only view and modify budgets and categories you have access to. Admin-only operations (like creating categories) are restricted to organization admins.

Enabling AI Budget Buddy

An organization admin can enable or disable AI Budget Buddy from the integration settings. When enabled, all team members who have completed individual Slack authorization can interact with the bot.

Monthly Actuals Reminders

You’ll receive notifications for any line items that need actuals to be updated. These notifications include:

• Line item name
• Category name
• Planned amount and currency
• Budget name
• One-click button to update the actual value

If you have more than 10 items to update, the notification is split into multiple messages (e.g., “Part 1/2: 10 out of 20 line items”).

Important: Without individual authorization, team members will not receive monthly actuals reminders, even if the organization-wide integration is enabled.

Notification Schedule

The reminder schedule is fully configurable by an organization admin:

• Occurrence: Choose a specific day pattern such as “Last Monday”, “1st Wednesday”, “2nd Friday”, etc.
• Hour: Set the time of day (0–23) for delivery
• Timezone: Select from 400+ timezones so reminders arrive at a convenient local time

The default schedule is the last Monday of each month at 4:00 PM UTC.

Admins can configure the schedule from the Notifications settings page. Slack and email reminders have independent schedules.

Notification Logic

You’ll receive actuals notifications for budget items where:

• You’re the assigned owner
• The actual amount is not set (0 is treated as an actual, given input)
• The line item belongs to the current month

Updating Actuals

When you receive a notification:

1. Click the “Update Actual” button next to the line item
2. Enter the actual amount in the popup modal
3. Click “Submit” to save

The update is immediately reflected in your marketing budget.

Comment Mention Notifications

The Slack integration also allows you to receive notifications when you’re mentioned in budget item comments:

• When a teammate @mentions you in a comment on any budget item, you’ll receive an instant Slack notification
• The notification includes the comment content and context
• A direct link to the budget item is provided for quick access
• This helps ensure you never miss important discussions about budget items

Managing Notifications

To authorize Slack for notifications:

1. Navigate to your Profile Settings
2. Select the Notifications tab
3. Click “Authorize Slack” if you haven’t already

Note: Once authorized, you’ll receive monthly actuals reminders, comment mention notifications, and can interact with AI Budget Buddy.

Troubleshooting

If you:

• Don’t receive notifications: Verify you’ve completed the individual Slack authorization in your Notifications tab
• AI Budget Buddy doesn’t respond: Check that an admin has enabled AI Budget Buddy in the integration settings, and that you’ve completed individual Slack authorization
• Need to reconnect: An admin can use the “Disconnect” button in the Integrations page for organization-wide issues, or individual users can reauthorize from their Notifications tab

Privacy & Security

We take the security and privacy of your data seriously. Here’s how we handle your data when you connect Etropo to Slack:

Data Collection

When using the Slack integration, we collect:

• Workspace ID for connection management
• User ID for authentication purposes
• Interaction data for updating budget actuals and AI conversations

Data Processing

Your data is processed securely:

• All requests are validated using cryptographic signatures
• User inputs are sanitized and validated
• Organization-level access control ensures data isolation
• AI Budget Buddy enforces the same permission model as the web app
• AI conversations are rate limited to 10 requests per minute per user
• Audit logs are maintained for security monitoring

Data Storage

• Location: All data is primarily stored in EU-central-1 (Frankfurt, Germany) via Supabase
• Encryption: We use AES-256-GCM encryption for sensitive data storage
• Access Control: Only authorized users within your organization can access and modify data

User Privacy

The integration:

• Only accesses data necessary for its functionality
• Respects your Slack workspace’s user permissions
• Never shares data across different organizations
• Maintains audit logs for security monitoring

Data Retention

• Integration data is retained as long as your account is active
• Disconnecting the integration removes associated Slack tokens
• Account deletion follows our standard 30-day retention policy

For complete details about how we handle your data, please review our Privacy Policy .

Support

For additional help you can reach out to our support team at: help@etropo.com