The Activity Log: Who Changed What, and When

Every meaningful action in GoodBooks is written to an activity log: transactions posted, voided, and corrected; contacts and gifts created or edited; settings changed; users added; approvals given; refunds issued. Each entry records who did it, when, and for edits, the field's value before and after. It's the answer to the auditor's first question and to "wait, who changed the address on this vendor?"

Where: the bell icon in the top bar shows recent activity; All Activity at the bottom opens the full Activity Feed.

Reading an entry

Each line shows the date and time (in your organization's timezone), the user, and a plain-English description: "Recorded check #1042 to Northland Legal Group for $1,250.00", "Updated contact Prairie Web Solutions", "Marked deposit batch DEP-260041 as deposited". Entries that changed an existing record expand to a Field / Before / After table, so a changed amount, date, or account is visible at a glance.

Entries made by a connected accounting firm carry a small badge with the firm's name; see Working With an Accountant or Bookkeeper.

Where else the trail shows up

• Journal entries keep their own history: a corrected or voided entry links to the entry that replaced it, and the original is never edited in place. See Fixing Mistakes in the Register.
• Donations record who receipted them and when, and any refund.
• Bank reconciliations are locked once completed and show who completed them.
• Internal Controls keeps a separate list of control violations and who acknowledged them; see Internal Controls.

Good to know

• The log can't be edited or cleared by anyone, including administrators.
• Logging in and out is not listed here; that's on each user's record under Settings → Users (last login date), which is also what the second-administrator policy reads.
• For a board or auditor, the usual package is this log for the period plus the completed reconciliations. Both print from the browser.