# Are formulas sometimes too slow for automations? **URL:** \ **Category:** Get Help\ **Created:** [April 30, 2026, 8:05am UTC](https://community.fibery.io/t/are-formulas-sometimes-too-slow-for-automations/10786 "2026-04-30T08:05:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jurgenappelo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/community.fibery.io/jurgenappelo/32/11935_2.png) [@jurgenappelo](https://community.fibery.io/u/jurgenappelo)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2026, 8:05am UTC](https://community.fibery.io/t/are-formulas-sometimes-too-slow-for-automations/10786/1 "2026-04-30T08:05:20Z")
Am I right in suspecting that formula calculations are sometimes lagging and automations run with the old values instead of their new values? I ran into two problems today that gave me this suspicion. (If it’s true, I’d like to know what to do about it.) **Problem 1:** I have an automation that _is not allowed to run_ when the Author Public Photo (a formula field) is false. ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/uploads/fibery/original/2X/b/b6f9acad796614ba974c4f38936d8aa511b65cc9.png) The problem is: sometimes it _does_ run, and then I get an error message: ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/uploads/fibery/original/2X/a/afd49d558e7a88b2e72924943a4bad97b55b87b9.png) When I then click on the details of the failed automation and I navigate to the entity, I find that Author Public Photo is _false_ (which is exactly why the automation breaks). ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/uploads/fibery/original/2X/a/a1b8c6c863d6aee201eff388d4fb2c1eee7f51c4.png) So why does the automation run in the first place when the value is false? I checked other the entities in the database. This morning, there were 137 that have formula Author Public Photo = false but 8 of them still got handled by the automation, with the predictable error. That’s an error rate of about 6%. Extremely annoying. Is this a known problem with formula calculations and automation rules? (P.S. Coincidentally, I found exactly the same problem one hour later in another automation where Clean Email has a value (not empty) but it gets copied as if it were empty. I ran this automation several times. Each time was successful, except for once, when the Name value in this rule ended up empty even though Clean Email had a value. I ran it with exactly the same data.) ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/uploads/fibery/original/2X/3/3929cd7be5d1f2c98c44b03213e1806eca460fda.png) ---
**Author:** ![Chr1sG](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/community.fibery.io/chr1sg/32/3941_2.png) [@Chr1sG](https://community.fibery.io/u/Chr1sG)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2026, 8:34am UTC](https://community.fibery.io/t/are-formulas-sometimes-too-slow-for-automations/10786/2 "2026-04-30T08:34:00Z")
Formulas and automations are independent asynchronous services, so it’s not that formulas are ‘too slow’ but rather that users cannot expect determinism when the two services interact. > **[Automation execution logic](https://the.fibery.io/@public/User_Guide/Guide/Automation-execution-logic-332)** ---
**Author:** ![ID.000](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/community.fibery.io/id.000/32/14109_2.png) [@ID.000](https://community.fibery.io/u/ID.000)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2026, 8:35am UTC](https://community.fibery.io/t/are-formulas-sometimes-too-slow-for-automations/10786/3 "2026-04-30T08:35:02Z")
We’ve also seen some instability with Fibery automations. 🤔 In our case, we had an automation that should send a Slack notification when a checkbox becomes true. But sometimes: - the notification was sent - sometimes it wasn’t - sometimes it was sent twice Because of that, we moved most important automations to **n8n**. Our current pattern is: - user clicks a button in Fibery - Fibery sends a webhook to n8n - n8n handles the logic [Make.com](http://Make.com) could probably be used the same way. For now, we keep only very simple automations inside Fibery. 🙂