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 — sorted into tabs by who was behind each one: your team, your customers, or Booked acting on its own. 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 log, the last section under Advanced. The line under the heading reads “Who did what: your team, your customers and Booked itself, with errors on their own tab.” so you know you have arrived. The section is read-only, so it has no Save button. 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. Once there is more than one page, ← Newer and Older → sit underneath with a “Page 1 of 7” counter between them. The pill in the top right counts the entries in whatever you are looking at — the whole log, one tab, or a search.
Who did what, when, and from where: your team, your customers, and Booked itself, with anything that went wrong on its own tab. Each booking and customer also carries its own history on its record.
| When | Who | What | Kind | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Oct 2026, 09:12 | Priya Sharma | Changed time: 17:00 → 17:30 Imogen Price · 6 Oct, 17:30 | Bookings | 82.14.6.203 |
| 2 Oct 2026, 08:43 | A customer | Sorry, that time was just taken. Please pick another slot. — GB-SLOT — svc 7 loc 2 emp 0 2026-10-06 09:30 party 1 not free | Error | 86.3.120.44 |
| 2 Oct 2026, 08:41 | Finn Nakamura | Online booking by Finn Nakamura — Flu vaccination on 2026-10-06 at 09:30 6 Oct, 09:30 | Bookings | 86.3.120.44 |
| 2 Oct 2026, 07:00 | Booked | Daily digest for Bramhall (6) → bramhall@meridian.co.uk | System | — |
| 1 Oct 2026, 18:02 | James Okafor | Service “Flu vaccination” updated | Services | 82.14.6.203 |
Settings › Activity log — the whole audit trail on Everything, with the four narrower tabs beside it.
- 1Activity log — under Advanced in the settings rail. Each booking and customer also carries its own history on its record.
- 2The five tabs — who was behind each entry, with a count: Everything, Your team, Customers, Automatic and Errors. If anything has gone wrong, the Errors count is picked out in red until you open that tab.
- 3Search and Any kind — both narrow within the tab you are on. Search by person, action or message; Any kind picks one kind of record, such as Bookings, Customers, Settings or Texts.
- 4A row — when, who, what happened and to which record, what kind of thing it was, and where the request came from. Error rows are written in red on every tab. Older → and ← Newer page through it.
Five tabs: who was behind it
Every entry is tagged with its source at the moment it is written, and the tabs sort by that tag. Open one and a line underneath says what it holds and when its own newest entry was written, for example “Done by people at the business, in Booked or through an API key. Latest here: 2 Oct 2026, 08:16.” The time is the first row on the tab’s first page, so it drops off the line while you are searching, have picked a kind, or have paged back. Everything has no such line. Entries from before this version of Booked were sorted into the tabs once, when the update was installed.
| Tab | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Everything | The whole log, newest first. This is where it opens. |
| Your team | Anything done by someone signed in to Booked — including everything done through an API key, which is recorded under the name of the person who made the key. |
| Customers | Things customers did for themselves on your site: booked online, paid online, answered the questions, cancelled or moved an appointment from their account, opened a document, joined the waiting list or took up an offer, bought or spent a package. Who names the customer. |
| Automatic | Booked acting on its own, with nobody signed in: the daily digest going out, a payment found by the catch-up check, a waiting-list offer being made, and on the tab’s own line, payouts and downloads rebuilt. Who reads Booked and From is blank, because nothing came in from outside. |
| Errors | Anything that went wrong, whoever was behind it: the error rows themselves, plus any failure another part of Booked recorded under its own kind, such as a text that could not be sent. These rows never appear under Automatic, even when Booked was the one acting. |
Reading a row
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
| When | Date and time of the change, such as 28 Sep 2026, 14:43, in your site’s own time — the timezone WordPress is set to, not the one on Settings › Region & currency. If you have those two set differently, this column follows WordPress. |
| Who | The display name of the member of staff who was signed in, including when they acted through an API key. On a customer’s own action it is the customer’s name, read from the booking or their record — or A customer when there is nothing left to read it from, say because that booking has since been deleted. It reads Booked when nobody was behind it at all. |
| What | The change in plain words, plus a second line naming the record: the customer and appointment time for a booking (just the time, when the customer is already named under Who), the name for a customer. That line is worked out when you read the log, so if the record has since been deleted it falls back to a number, such as “Booking #42”. The search box does not look at this second line. |
| Kind | The kind of record touched — Bookings, Customers, Services, Settings and so on. Errors are badged in red. |
| From | The IP address the request came from — useful for spotting repeat attempts from one place. Blank on Automatic rows, because nothing came in from outside. |
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.
Every edit to an appointment is logged, but deleting one outright from Bookings writes no entry at all — so the log will never tell you who removed it. The earlier rows about that appointment stay, but their second line drops to just its number (“Booking #42”), because the appointment they pointed at is gone. If you want to be able to answer "what happened to that one?" later, set it to Cancelled rather than deleting it.
Answering "who cancelled this?"
- Go to Settings, then Activity logThe log opens on Everything, newest first, so a cancellation from this morning is usually on the first page. Pick Your team if you only want to see what staff did.
- 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.
- 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.
- Read the Who columnThat is the member of staff who did it. If the row sits under Customers instead, with the customer’s own name against it, they cancelled it themselves from their account, and the message reads “Cancelled by the customer from their account” followed by the reason they gave.
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 Activity log sits behind the same permission as the rest of Settings. A member of staff who can manage bookings and customers still cannot open it — so if a colleague says the tab isn't there, that is why.
The Errors tab, and when to use it
Open 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. A failure on your public booking form reads A customer, because nobody was signed in, and anything Booked ran into on its own reads Booked. Error rows from before the tabs existed read Booked unless a member of staff was signed in at the time.
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, open 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 section. It is the last card on Settings › Booking rules, headed Blocked from booking — scroll past Taking a booking, Deposits, Booking references and More than one appointment and it is at the bottom. People hunt for it under Activity log or Customers and give up; it is here.
Stop specific emails, email domains, IP addresses or IP ranges from making a booking. Blocked attempts are turned away with a neutral message and recorded in the Activity log.
| Type | Value | Reason | |
|---|---|---|---|
| blocked@example.com | repeated no-shows | Remove |
Settings › Booking rules — the blocklist sits at the bottom.
- 1Add a block — an email, a whole email domain, an IP address or a range; Auto-detect works out which from what you type. The reason is for your team only.
- 2The list — everyone blocked, with Remove to lift it. A single person can also be blocked from their customer record, under Stop them booking, or with Block from booking in a booking’s quick actions; both let you pick their email, their whole email domain or the connection they booked from.
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.
Booked blocks on the address your web server reports. If your site sits behind a CDN, a proxy or a load balancer, that can be the proxy's address rather than the visitor's — so an IP block may miss the person you meant and turn away everyone else arriving the same way. Blocking the email address is the safer choice. Blocking a whole domain bars everyone who uses it, which is right for a throwaway-mail domain and badly wrong for a common one.
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. The same refusal stops them joining a waiting list, buying a pass or uploading a document. Expect a phone call rather than a complaint — which is normally what you want.
The message a blocked booker gets on your public form.
- 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 Bookings and sits under Customers, and alongside it goes an error row carrying the same detail and the GB-BLOCK code, under Errors. Both read A customer in Who. So blocked people show up on two tabs — worth knowing before you assume Errors is showing you a fault.
What blocking does not do
- It only guards what customers do themselves. 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.