# Monitoring scheduled jobs

> Jobs fail silently. Here is how to make them fail loudly, without a pager for every hiccup.

URL: https://pagerless.dev/guides/cron-monitoring
Updated: 2026-10-22

- **Ping at the end, not the start**, so a job that crashes halfway counts as missed.
- **Report failures explicitly** with the error, so you're not waiting for the grace period.
- **Set a grace period** a little longer than normal run-time variation.
- **Use the job's time zone**, so daylight saving doesn't create false alarms.
- **Wake only for jobs with real cost**: billing, backups, data syncs customers depend on.

Pagerless check-ins do all five: [docs](https://pagerless.dev/docs/check-ins).