Staff Activity & Audit Logs

The problem of operating without an activity log

When something doesn't add up — a missing refund, an inventory discrepancy, a price change you didn't authorize — the first question is always: who did this, and when? Without a centralized activity log, you have no way to answer. You're left guessing, asking staff, or worse, accepting losses you can't explain. This lack of visibility creates an environment where mistakes go uncorrected, unauthorized actions go unnoticed, and accountability erodes over time.

For Haitian businesses with multiple employees — whether a busy alimentation in Pétion-Ville with rotating cashiers, a hardware store in Cap-Haïtien with delivery staff, or a pharmacy in Delmas with licensed pharmacists and assistants — the risk is real. A discount applied without permission. A product cost changed by mistake. A customer balance adjusted without documentation. A purchase order created but never received. Each of these events has a financial impact, and without an audit trail, you cannot trace the source or prevent recurrence. Vendrex Activity Logs gives you the context you need to understand what happened, so you can resolve issues quickly and keep your team accountable — without making it feel like surveillance.

What are activity logs and audit trails in a POS system?

Activity logs (also called audit logs or audit trails) are a chronological record of every significant action taken in your POS system. Each entry captures who performed the action, what they did, when it happened, and the relevant details — such as the product, customer, order, or employee affected. In Vendrex, the activity log covers the full scope of store operations: sales and refunds, inventory adjustments and product changes, employee role updates and shift activity, purchase order creation and receipt, customer and supplier interactions, expense entries, and settings changes.

An audit trail goes a step further by preserving the before-and-after state of each change. When a product price is updated, the log shows the old price and the new price. When a customer balance is adjusted, it shows the previous balance and the new balance. This level of detail turns a simple log into a powerful tool for investigation, compliance, and coaching. Combined with role-based permissions, activity logs give you both prevention (restricting who can do what) and detection (seeing exactly what happened when something slips through).

Vendrex surfaces activity logs in two places. The main Activity Log screen provides a filterable, searchable history of all actions across your store. The Recent Activity widget on the dashboard gives you an at-a-glance view of the latest actions — "Showing last 10 of 13 orders" — so you stay informed without leaving your home screen. For deeper investigation, the activity detail sheet opens with business-friendly context: the employee name, timestamp, action type, affected entity, and a deep link to jump directly to the sale, product, employee, or order in question.

How activity logs work in Vendrex

Every time a meaningful action occurs in Vendrex, the system automatically creates an activity record. This happens server-side to ensure completeness and tamper-resistance. The record includes the employee who performed the action (linked to their account), the action type (e.g., sale.created, product.price_updated, employee.role_changed, purchase_order.received, customer.balance_adjusted), a human-readable description, the timestamp, and a reference to the affected entity with a deep-link target.

On the Activity Log screen, you can filter by date range, employee, action type, and entity type (sales, inventory, employees, purchase orders, customers, suppliers, expenses, settings). This makes it easy to answer questions like: "Show me all price changes made by the manager this week" or "Which employee processed the refund on order #1247?" or "What inventory adjustments happened yesterday?" The list shows "Showing last 10 of 13 orders" style pagination so you always know the scope of what you're viewing.

Tapping an activity opens the detail sheet. Here you see the full context: the employee's name and role, the exact time, the action category, a plain-language description ("Maria changed the price of 'Rice 25kg' from HTG 3,500 to HTG 3,200"), and a button to navigate directly to the affected record — the product detail, the order screen, the employee profile, or the purchase order. This deep linking eliminates the need to search manually after finding something suspicious in the log.

Activity logs are also integrated with reports and employee management. The dashboard KPIs for Sales, Profit, and Expenses show per-currency breakdowns (HTG and USD), and the Recent Activity widget keeps the latest actions visible. For multi-store businesses, activity logs are scoped per store with an option to view consolidated activity across locations, just like multi-store reporting.

Common challenges Vendrex Activity Logs solve

Unexplained inventory discrepancies. Your stock count shows 50 units but the system says 47. Without an activity log, you have no way to know if it was a missed sale, an unrecorded return, a receiving error, or a manual adjustment. With Vendrex, you filter the log by "inventory" actions for that product and see exactly what happened — who adjusted it, when, and by how much.

Unauthorized discounts or refunds. A customer claims they got a discount, but you didn't authorize it. Or a refund appears that shouldn't have been processed. The activity log shows every discount and refund with the employee name, timestamp, and the original transaction linked. You can address the issue directly with the responsible person and adjust permissions if needed via role permissions.

Price changes you didn't approve. In a multi-employee environment, someone might change a product price by mistake or intentionally. The log captures every price update with the old and new values. You can review all price changes in a given period and revert any that were errors.

Customer balance disputes. A customer says they paid but their balance still shows a debt. The activity log shows every payment, credit adjustment, and sale for that customer, with timestamps and employee attribution. You can trace the exact sequence of events and resolve the dispute with evidence.

Purchase order discrepancies. A supplier says they delivered 100 units but your system shows 95 received. The log shows who received the PO, when, and what quantity was recorded. If it was a partial receipt, you can see the history of each receipt against that PO.

Employee accountability and coaching. Beyond catching problems, activity logs help you recognize good work. You can see which employees are consistently processing sales, helping customers, and following procedures. This data supports fair performance reviews and targeted coaching — the "accountability without surveillance" approach that builds trust rather than resentment.

Benefits by industry

• Retail stores — Track price changes, discount usage, and refund patterns by employee. Identify training needs and prevent shrink from unauthorized actions.
• Restaurants — Monitor voids, comps, and tip adjustments. See which servers are following procedures and which need oversight.
• Pharmacies — Maintain audit trails for prescription processing, controlled substance dispensing, and price changes for regulatory compliance.
• Grocery stores — Track high-volume transaction anomalies, employee shift handoffs, and perishable inventory adjustments.
• Hardware stores — Monitor bulk price updates, contractor pricing changes, and special order tracking through purchase orders.
• Clothing boutiques — Track variant-specific price changes, seasonal discount patterns, and employee sales attribution for commission.
• Beauty salons — Monitor service price changes, product retail sales by stylist, and appointment-related adjustments.
• Multi-location businesses — View consolidated activity across all stores or drill into a specific location. Compare employee behavior patterns across sites.

Why choose Vendrex Activity Logs?

Key Features

• Complete action coverage — Sales, refunds, inventory adjustments, product/price changes, employee role updates, shift logs, purchase order lifecycle, customer/supplier balance changes, expense entries, settings modifications.
• Employee attribution — Every action linked to the staff member who performed it, with their name and role visible.
• Before/after values — See exactly what changed: old price vs new price, previous balance vs adjusted balance, old role vs new role.
• Advanced filtering — Filter by date range, specific employee, action category (sales, inventory, employees, POs, customers, suppliers, expenses, settings), and entity type.
• Deep linking — Tap any activity to open the detail sheet, then jump directly to the affected sale, product, employee, purchase order, or customer.
• Dashboard widget — "Showing last 10 of 13 orders" style recent activity feed on your home screen for at-a-glance awareness.
• Activity detail sheet — Clean, business-friendly presentation with employee, timestamp, action type, description, and navigation button.
• Server-side integrity — Logs created server-side in transactions, preventing gaps or tampering.
• Offline resilient — Actions taken offline queue locally and sync with full attribution when connectivity returns.
• Multi-store ready — Per-store logs with cross-store consolidated view for multi-location owners.

Frequently Asked Questions