Activity

Something is off. The stock of baby milk dropped by six on Thursday and nobody remembers selling six. An order's delivery fee changed after the customer paid. A price is lower than you set it.

In a shop run on a notebook, this is where the arguing starts. In Tabs you open the record and read its Activity: a dated list of everything that was done to it, each line with a name on it.

Nobody has to turn this on, and nobody writes it. Tabs records it as the work happens.

Where to find it

Activity sits on the page of the thing you're asking about.

On orders, transfers and customers it's a card under the page's main content.

Reading it

The newest line is at the top. Each one says who did it, what they did and when, in a plain sentence. On a product's page, a sale reads along the lines of "Amaka sold 2 of RICE-50KG on order ORD-1042".

Where the record keeps both, the line shows the old value and the new one. An order's status goes from open to completed. A stock count takes an item from 14 to 11.

The list holds as much as there is. It scrolls inside its own card and loads older entries as you reach the end, so a product you've sold for a year still opens quickly.

Three tools narrow it down:

• Search for a word, a name or an order number.
• The period. All time, the last 7 days or the last 30 days.
• The kind of activity, on a member's page. More on that below.

What a line doesn't show

Some details are left out on purpose.

Phone numbers, email addresses, street addresses and free-text notes are never copied into the record. If one of those changes, the line says it changed, without the old or new words. That way the record can be shown to a manager without handing over every customer's phone number.

A private note on an order is recorded as added, edited or removed. Its text stays on the order, for the people allowed to read it.

What one person did

Open a member from the Members page. Their Activity is one list of two things: what they did in the business, and what was done to them, such as a role change or a suspension.

Because one person touches many parts of the shop, this list can be narrowed by kind:

• Orders
• Products and stock
• Transfers
• Customers
• Tasks
• Shifts
• Team and access

So "what did Chinedu do to our stock last week?" is two clicks: Products and stock, last 7 days.

Each action appears once here. Recording an order with five items is one line on the member's page. Each of those five products still shows the sale in its own Activity.

Chat is left out of this list. Messages aren't work done on the business, and a busy chat would bury the sales and stock changes you came to read.

A worked example

On Friday Tabs shows 11 packs of size M diapers, and the shelf agrees. But you had 44 after Monday's delivery, and you're sure you haven't sold more than 30. There should be 14.

Open the product and go to its Activity. Set the period to the last 7 days. You read down:

• Monday: a count after the delivery, 20 to 44.
• Tuesday to Friday: sales on eleven orders, 30 packs in all, each with the cashier's name.
• Wednesday, 6:40pm: Tunde adjusted the stock from 21 to 18, reason "broken, expired or lost".

There are your three packs. Now it's a conversation with Tunde about what was damaged on Wednesday evening, not a hunt through the whole team. It may well have a good answer: a carton that got wet in the rain. Most shortages turn out to be a mistake or something nobody wrote down. The record is how you find that out before you accuse anyone.

What gets recorded

Across the business, Tabs records:

• Products. Created, edited, deleted, imported from a spreadsheet, photos changed, variants added and edited.
• Stock. Every adjustment and every count, with the number before and after and the reason. Stock that moved because of an order or a transfer names that order or transfer.
• Orders. Created, edited, status changes, handovers and deliveries, payments recorded and voided, returns, notes, deletion.
• Stores and suppliers. Added, edited, removed, and which store became the primary one.
• Transfers. Created, edited, each change of status, removed.
• Team. Invitations sent, accepted, declined and revoked. Roles created, edited and deleted, with the permissions that were added or taken away.
• Shifts and tasks. Shifts added, changed, cancelled and published. Tasks created, given out, moved along and removed. Checklists created and changed. Handover notes left.

Some lines have no person behind them. When Tabs itself does something, such as finishing a large spreadsheet import in the background, the line is Tabs' own.

Who can see it

Viewing activity is its own permission. A role without it doesn't see the Activity card or tab on records. The business owner has it. A role you create doesn't until you tick it.

There's one exception that's always on: your own Activity. Anyone can open their own member page and read what they've done, whatever their role.

Think about who needs this. An owner and a manager, certainly. A cashier usually doesn't need to read what the store keeper did. Set it under roles.

What it can't be used for

• It can't be edited. There's no way to change or delete a line, for anyone, the owner included. That's what makes it worth reading.
• It doesn't undo anything. Activity tells you a price was changed. Putting it back is still up to you.
• Stores and suppliers have no page of their own, so their history has no card to sit on. Changes to them are still recorded, and they show on the page of the member who made them.
• Older records can say less. A business that was using Tabs before Activity arrived has its earlier history filled in from what was on file. Those lines may not show quantities, and some name "Someone" where nobody was stored against the change.

Getting the most from it

• Give every person their own login. A shared login puts one name on everything, and the record can't tell you which pair of hands it was. See members and roles.
• Have staff add a note to stock adjustments. Every adjustment carries a reason, and the note says the rest. "Carton got wet, 3 packs spoiled" settles the question before it's asked.
• Read it before you ask. Walking up to someone with "you adjusted the diapers on Wednesday evening, what happened?" gets a better answer than "who touched the diapers?".
• Be fair with it. The record shows what was entered. It doesn't show the customer who walked off with a pack while your cashier was serving someone else.