Lesson 9.5 – Email Logs and Audit Logs

Welcome to Lesson 9.5! In FastFund Online, transparency and accountability are crucial for both your external communications and your internal data management. FastFund provides specific utility logs to help administrators track exactly what is happening within the system: Email Logs for monitoring outbound communications, and Audit Logs for tracking internal user activity.

In this lesson, we will explore how to use these logs to verify sent receipts and maintain strict internal controls over your database.

1. Tracking Communications with Email Logs

FastFund allows you to email donor receipts directly from the system to save time and postage. To help you keep track of these outbound communications, FastFund maintains a centralized Email Log.

All emails sent from the system for Donor Receipts (and Client Billing, if your system is integrated with FastFund Accounting) are recorded in this email log. This provides your development team with a reliable history to verify whether a specific donor has successfully been sent their electronic acknowledgment.

2. Internal Controls and the Audit Log

To maintain data integrity and institute proper internal controls, FastFund uses an Audit Log to track all user activity.

In FastFund, all data entry—including the addition, editing, and deleting of constituent names, chart of accounts, budgets, and financial transactions—is permanently associated with a specific user. Because this log contains a comprehensive history of every change made to your financial and donor data, access to the Audit Log is strictly limited to authorized users (typically the Company Administrator).

3. Reviewing Audit Log Details

When you access the Audit Log to trace the history of an entry, the system provides a complete picture of the event. The log captures the following critical pieces of information for every tracked activity:

• ID & Item: The identification number and a brief description of the item that was affected.
• Date: The exact date the data entry or modification occurred.
• Action: The type of activity performed by the user. FastFund categorizes these actions as Create (for new additions), Update (for modifications to existing records), and Delete (for deletions).
• User: The specific user who entered or modified the data.
• IP Address: The exact IP address of the computer or network where the user logged onto the FastFund system, ensuring complete accountability for where the change originated.

If you need more detailed information about a specific action listed in the log, you can simply click on the item to open it and view the expanded details.