A detailed activity log that records who did what, when, and from where. Useful for troubleshooting, accountability, and keeping an eye on what’s happening behind the scenes in your store.
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Why It Matters
When something changes in your store — a customer status gets updated, an order moves to a different state, a setting gets tweaked — it’s helpful to know who made that change and when. Without an audit log, you’re relying on memory and guesswork.
The audit log gives you a clear, searchable trail of activity. It’s especially useful when:
- Multiple staff members manage orders and you need to know who changed what
- A customer disputes an order status change and you need to verify the timeline
- You suspect unauthorised access and want to check login activity
- You changed a setting last week and can’t remember what the old value was
- You’re debugging an issue and need to see the sequence of events that led to it
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Before You Start
- Tracksies HQ plugin activated on your WordPress site
- WooCommerce installed and active
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Enabling the Audit Log
The audit log is controlled by the hq.audit_log feature toggle. It’s enabled by default, but here’s how to check:
- Go to Tracksies > Settings in the left sidebar
- Click the Features tab
- Find the HQ module tile
- Look for Audit Log and make sure it’s switched on
Once enabled, Tracksies immediately starts recording activity. There’s no additional setup needed — it works in the background.
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What Gets Logged
The audit log captures a wide range of events across your store. Here’s what it tracks:
Customer Events
| Event | What’s Recorded |
|---|---|
| Customer created | A new customer profile is added to Tracksies |
| Customer updated | Changes to a customer’s profile data |
| Customer status changed | Status transitions (e.g., Active to VIP, or Active to Caution) |
| Customer merged | Two customer profiles combined into one |
Order Events
| Event | What’s Recorded |
|---|---|
| Order status changed | Any status transition (e.g., Processing to Packed, Packed to Shipped) |
Shipping & Fulfilment Events
| Event | What’s Recorded |
|---|---|
| Package created | A new package is created for an order |
| Package shipped | A package is marked as shipped |
| Tracking added | Tracking information is added to an order |
Returns Events
| Event | What’s Recorded |
|---|---|
| Return requested | A customer submits a return request |
| Return status changed | Return moves between states (Pending, Approved, Received, Inspected, Refunded, Rejected) |
Settings Events
| Event | What’s Recorded |
|---|---|
| Settings changed | Any Tracksies setting or option is modified, including the old and new values |
Security Events
| Event | What’s Recorded |
|---|---|
| User login | A user successfully logs in to the WordPress admin |
| Failed login attempt | An unsuccessful login attempt, including the username tried |
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What Each Log Entry Contains
Every entry in the audit log captures:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Action | What happened (e.g., “order_status_changed”, “customer_created”) |
| Object type | The type of thing affected (e.g., customer, order, setting) |
| Object ID | The specific item (e.g., order #1234, customer #56) |
| Old value | The previous state or value (where applicable) |
| New value | The new state or value |
| User | The WordPress user who performed the action |
| IP address | The IP address the action came from |
| Timestamp | The exact date and time |
This means you can answer questions like “who changed order #1234 to Shipped, and when?” or “what was the return policy setting before someone changed it last Tuesday?”
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Viewing the Log
The audit log has its own admin page with a filterable, searchable table of entries.
You can filter log entries to narrow down what you’re looking for — by action type, date range, user, or object. This makes it practical to use even on busy stores with thousands of logged events.
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Exporting to CSV
Need to share the log with your accountant, hand it to a developer for debugging, or just keep an offline backup? You can export the entire log (or your current filtered view) to a CSV file.
Look for the Export button on the audit log page. The CSV includes all fields — action, object, old/new values, user, IP, and timestamp — so you have the full picture in a spreadsheet.
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Auto-Purge (Retention Settings)
The audit log stores entries in a custom database table, and over time, that table grows. To keep things manageable, Tracksies includes an auto-purge system with configurable retention.
You set the number of days to keep log entries. Anything older than that is automatically deleted. This runs in the background — you don’t need to remember to clean up manually.
How to configure retention:
- Go to the audit log settings (accessible from the audit log admin page)
- Set the Retention Period in days
- Save
Entries older than your retention period are purged automatically on a regular schedule.
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Weekly Reminder Email
While the audit log is active, Tracksies sends a weekly reminder email to let you know it’s still running. This is a deliberate safety measure — the audit log records IP addresses and login activity, which consumes database space over time. The reminder makes sure you don’t forget it’s on, especially if you enabled it to troubleshoot a specific issue and then moved on.
If you no longer need the audit log, the reminder is your nudge to go turn it off.
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A Note About Database Space
The audit log records every tracked event into a custom database table. On a busy store, this can add up quickly. A store processing 50 orders a day with multiple status changes, tracking updates, and staff logins could generate hundreds of log entries daily.
Our recommendation: Enable the audit log when you need it — for troubleshooting, during staff training, or when you want to monitor activity for a specific period. When you’re done, turn it off. If you do leave it running long-term, make sure your auto-purge retention period is set to something reasonable (30 days is a good starting point for most stores).
The weekly reminder email exists specifically for this reason. It’s not nagging — it’s protecting your database.
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When to Use It
Good times to enable the audit log:
- You’re troubleshooting a problem and need to see what happened in what order
- You have multiple staff members managing orders and want accountability
- You’re training new staff and want to review their actions
- You suspect unauthorised access to your WordPress admin
- You need a record of settings changes for compliance or internal audits
Good times to turn it off:
- The issue you were investigating is resolved
- You’re a solo operator and don’t need to track your own actions
- Your database is getting large and you want to reduce overhead
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Common Questions
Does the audit log slow down my site?
The logging itself is lightweight — it writes a single row to a database table when an event occurs. It doesn’t add noticeable overhead to page loads or checkout. The concern is more about long-term database size than real-time performance.
Can I see who logged in from which IP address?
Yes. Login events record both the WordPress user and their IP address, so you can see exactly where the login came from.
What happens when I turn the audit log off?
New events stop being recorded immediately. Existing log entries remain in the database until they’re purged by the auto-purge schedule (or until you clear them manually via export and database cleanup). Turning the log back on later starts fresh — it doesn’t retroactively capture events that happened while it was off.
Will the log capture actions by other plugins?
The audit log tracks events that flow through Tracksies and WooCommerce hooks — order status changes, customer updates, logins, and Tracksies-specific events. It doesn’t capture actions from unrelated plugins (like a forms plugin saving a submission) unless those actions trigger a WooCommerce or Tracksies hook that the log monitors.
Can I delete individual log entries?
The log is designed as an immutable record — individual entries can’t be selectively deleted. This is intentional, because an audit log that can be cherry-picked isn’t much of an audit log. Use the auto-purge retention setting to manage the overall size, or export and archive the data if you need to clear the table.