Activity log and blocking bookers

See what changed and who did it — and stop a problem customer rebooking.

Booked keeps a running record of the changes people make — who did it, when, and from where. It also keeps a list of people who are no longer allowed to book with you online. Both live under Settings, and neither is quite where most people go looking first.

Where the Activity log lives

Open Settings from the Booked menu, then pick Activity — the last tab down the left-hand rail. The sub-line changes to "Every change made in Booked — who did what, and when." so you know you have arrived. The tab is read-only, so it has no Save settings button, and neither do Your plan or Calendar sync. That is deliberate, not a fault.

Nothing is trimmed on a schedule, so the log reaches back to the day Booked was installed. It shows 50 rows a page, newest first, with Previous / Next and a "Page 1 / 7" counter underneath.

• 1Activity — the last tab in the rail. There is no Save settings button while you are on it.
• 2Search by person, action… — matches the message, the staff member's name and the internal action name. It waits a moment after you stop typing before it searches, and puts you back on page 1. It does not search the grey second line.
• 3Everything · Changes · Errors — Changes hides the error rows, Errors shows nothing else. Switching filter also resets you to page 1.
• 4The change itself — one plain sentence, with a second line naming the record it happened to. For a booking that is the customer plus the appointment date and time.
• 5An error row — highlighted and tagged in red. These are failures Booked caught behind the scenes, while whoever was on screen saw only a short, friendly message.

Reading a row

Editing a booking writes one row per field you actually changed, so one save can produce several lines — "Changed time: 09:30 → 10:15", "Changed price: £45.00 → £35.00". Save a booking without changing anything and nothing is written at all.

Answering "who cancelled this?"

1. Go to Settings, then ActivityThe log opens on Everything, newest first, so a cancellation from this morning is usually on the first page.
2. Search for the change, not the customerType cancelled into Search by person, action…. The search reads the message text and staff names — it does not read the grey second line, so the customer's name will not find a cancellation on its own.
3. Look for the status changeThe row you want reads "Changed status: confirmed → cancelled", with the customer's name and the appointment's date and time on the second line so you know it is the right one.
4. Read the Who columnThat is the member of staff who did it. If it says System, the change did not come from anyone signed in to your admin.

The same trick answers the other awkward questions — search the words Booked writes, not the person they are about. Changed time finds who moved an appointment, Changed price who dropped a price, Changed customer who reassigned a booking, and Deleted a note who removed a note. Customer names do appear in some messages — "Online booking by Daniel Okafor", "Changed customer: Emily Carter → Daniel Okafor" — so searching a name is still worth a try, it just will not catch everything.

The Errors filter, and when to use it

Pick Errors when something quietly did not work. These rows hold the real, technical reason behind a friendly on-screen message — an AI write-up that never came back, an analysis that failed, a deposit the payment step could not start. They are written in the language of the thing that broke, not in plain English, so expect timeouts and status codes rather than sentences.

Who is whoever's request ran into the problem. If a member of staff was signed in when it happened — asking for AI notes, running an analysis — their name is on the row. It reads System only when the failure came from the public booking form, where nobody is signed in.

When a customer is turned away, Booked shows them a short reference code after the apology, such as "(ref: GB-PAY-VERIFY)". Ask for that code, select Errors and paste it into the search box, and you land on the row that says what actually went wrong.

Blocking someone from booking

The blocklist is not its own tab. It is the last card on Settings › Booking rules, under Blocked from booking — scroll past Booking rules, Deposits, Booking references, Bank statement name, Appointment bundles and Group bookings and it is at the bottom. People hunt for it under Activity or Customers and give up; it is here.

• 1Bookings — the tab the blocklist lives on. There is no "Blocklist" tab of its own.
• 2Type — Auto-detect, Email address, Email domain, IP address or IP range (CIDR). Auto-detect reads what you typed: a slash means a range, a valid IP means an IP, an @ with a dot means an email, and anything else is treated as a domain.
• 3Value — the address, domain, IP or range to bar. Pressing Enter here adds it. Anything Booked cannot make sense of is refused with "That doesn’t look like a valid email, domain, IP or range."
• 4Add to blocklist — takes effect the moment you press it. This card saves itself, so the page's Save settings button has nothing to do with it.
• 5Remove — lifts the block immediately, with no confirmation step.

Add the same thing twice and nothing happens — no duplicate row, no error, no confirmation. It looks as though the button did not work, but the entry is already there in the table below.

What the blocked person sees

Nothing that tells them they are blocked. They fill in the form as usual, and when they try to book they get one neutral line. Expect a phone call rather than a complaint — which is normally what you want.

• 1The refusal — deliberately vague, and shown before anything is written: no appointment is created, no customer record is touched and no payment is taken. The code on the end is the giveaway — if someone rings quoting GB-BLOCK, they are on your list. Meanwhile a row appears in your Activity log reading "Blocked booking attempt — matched email “m.reed@example.com”."

One turned-away attempt actually writes two rows, not one. The plain "Blocked booking attempt" row is badged booking, and alongside it goes an error row carrying the same detail and the GB-BLOCK code. So blocked people show up under Errors as well as under Changes — worth knowing before you assume the error filter is showing you a fault.

What blocking does not do

• It only guards the public booking form. You or your staff can still create a booking for that person inside Booked — useful when you will take them by phone but not let them book themselves.
• It does not cancel anything. Appointments they have already made stay in the diary. Cancel those yourself from Bookings.
• It does not touch their customer record. Their history, notes and documents stay exactly where they were.
• Marking a customer "Inactive" is not a block. That field is a private marker and nothing reads it — it will not stop anyone booking. The blocklist is the only thing that does.

Lifting a block

Go back to Settings › Booking rules, find the row and press Remove. It goes at once — there is no "are you sure?" and no undo, so check you are on the right row first. Take the last entry away and the card returns to "Nothing is blocked. Anyone can book."

Both halves of this are recorded. Adding writes "Added a booking blocklist entry." and removing writes "Removed a booking blocklist entry.", each with your name against it — so if a blocked customer suddenly gets through, the Activity log will tell you who let them.