How to Trigger a Final Action After a Loop Finishes in Airtable Automations

You have an automation that has a loop inside it and you want to run one final action after the loop finishes. Something simple, like sending a notification once the last record is done.

But Airtable does not let you put anything after a loop. Once you add a repeating group, that becomes the end of the automation and you cannot attach anything after it.

So you are stuck and now you do not know how to handle this, and you start wondering if there is any workaround or best practice you can use to overcome this limitation and somehow add steps after the loop. Is there a way to do it at all?

Fortunately, there is a simple workaround you can use that still lets you achieve the result you want without much extra setup.

Track the run in a helper table

Since Airtable does not let you add any step after a loop, the only way to detect when the loop is finished is to create your own tracking system. You do this by adding a helper table that records the progress of the automation run.

Set up a table called Automation Run Tracker. Inside this table, create the following fields.

Total Loop Count
This stores how many records your loop is going to process.

Completed Loop Count
This stores how many loop items have already been processed.

Next Loop Count
This formula takes the current Completed Loop Count and adds one to it.
{Completed Loop Count} + 1

Loop Complete Flag
This field checks if Completed Loop Count matches Total Loop Count. If they match, it outputs the word Complete.
IF({Completed Loop Count} = {Total Loop Count}, "Complete")

This helper table is the key to detecting the end of the loop.

How your automation uses this table

In your main automation, before the loop starts, you add a step that creates a record in the Automation Run Tracker table and sets the Total Loop Count field to the number of items the loop will process.

Then inside the loop, after each record is processed, you want to update how many times the loop has run so far. You already created the Next Loop Count formula to calculate the next value, because Airtable Automations do not allow you to increment numbers directly.

So in the update step inside the loop, you add an action at the end of each loop cycle and simply copy the value from the Next Loop Count formula into the Completed Loop Count field. This increases the count by one every time the loop runs.

When the final record has been processed, the Completed Loop Count field will match the Total Loop Count field, and the Loop Complete Flag formula will switch to the word Complete. That change becomes the signal that the entire loop has finished.

Use a second automation for the final step

Now that you have a field that flips to Complete only when the loop finishes, you create a second automation.

This automation runs whenever the Loop Complete Flag becomes Complete. You can use this second automation to send notifications, write summaries, update statuses, or reference any extra data you stored in the Automation Run Tracker table.

If you do not want to go through this additional setup, the only option is to use an external automation tool like Make. With that approach, you do not have to manage any of these helper fields yourself, and after the loop finishes you can add any number of modules you need for the final actions.