Activating and Using Change Logs

Please Note:  This article applies to Connected 10.0.04.   Article updated for version 10.2 or greater: Activating and Using Change Logs

Change logs are designed to track exact changes made to key profile records, which in turn, can affect many other records/reports based on those settings.  For example, knowing that a Customer’s credit limit was increased from $50,000 to $60,000 on a specific date/time and by which user can be useful information for managers and other users of Connected.

If change logs are not activated, the date added and each subsequent modification (date/time/user) will be available in the Connected Record Info.    If change logs are activated, key profile records, will not only show the date/time/user of the record edit but will also show the exact change(s) from/to that were made.

For example, the following change log is from a series of edits to a customer profile record.

Change logs affect the following key profile records:  

-Accounts

-Customers

-Vendors

-Inventory Items

-Jobs

To activate the change logs:

1) Select File -> Company Setup and choose “General Company Setup”.

2) Click the “Options” tab

3) Click on the Use Change Logs checkbox and select which modules it should be active in.  Click OK to save the changes as shown in the screen below.

Once the change logs have been activated, all changes made to Accounts, Customers, Vendors, Inventory Items and Jobs will be recorded in an expanded record info as shown in the following Customers screen.

Clicking on the blue change log hyperlink, as shown in the screen above, and Connected will open up either Notepad application on a Windows PC or Text Edit on a macOS to show a text file with the exact changes made during that specific modification.

Change Logs Expanded

• Change logs can be used not only to track value changes such as customer/vendor terms but can also track exact text changes.  For example, a General Ledger Account or Customer Name that is changed will show the from/to values.

• Change logs cannot be tracked when importing an update to many records at once.  Specific changes made by import are not tracked except to note that a record has been modified by import.

• If a General Ledger account budget is edited from within the Accounts window, all changes will be tracked (from/to).