Your PPS system maintains an audit of all changes made to the database in key areas. The audit details that are captured allow the PPS system administrator to make audit enquiries to see which PPS user has carried out which changes to the database, and precisely when.
Please note, if you are a Sync Server user or have multiple PPS systems then each system has its own independent audit. Changes made on a particular system will only show in the audit for that system.
This guide will take you through using the Audit Viewer and how to track and locate changes in your system.
Section 1 - The Audit Viewer
When logged into the Administrator account you can access the Audit Viewer via Tools > Database Maintenance > View Database Audit. At the top of the screen you have search options that will allow you to narrow down results in searches for particular changes. Find information on each of these search options below.
Select which Audit file to view - Each month when reindexing you should be archiving your Audit. This allows for optimum speeds of your PPS system. Each month will then appear as a separate file in the audit view with the Current file being the present month. Select which file to search here.
- Client - If you're looking for changes regarding a particular client then select them here using the Search function.
- Date between- Enter a date range to narrow down your audit results. The range entered here should fall within the audit file you've chosen to search.
- Time between - Choose a time range to populate results for changes only made to the system at certain times.
- Sync Status - For Sync Server users search status P for anything that has successfully synced.
- Table - PPS data is sorted in categories. Selecting a specific category will just bring through results of relevant data. For example:
ACTIVITY will just bring through activity results (emails, SMS, letters etc.)
APPOINTM can be used for searching Appointments only.
APPTCFG lists changes made via Tools > Options > Appointments Diary Options.
DIARWEEK will find results for diary setup done via Tools > Set Up Appointment Diaries.
If you'd like to find out which Table represents a certain part of the system then test this by making a change and then head to the audit viewer and search for the most recent changes to the system. The table your change falls under will be listed in the result for the change you made.
- Type - Narrow results down further by only searching for particular types of changes using this dropdown.
- User Initials - If you want to just find changes made by a particular user of your PPS system then enter their initials here. These are the initials set up via Tools > Set Up Practitioners and System Users.
- Index Key - Everything added to your PPS system is given a unique series of digits, which is the Index Key. Enter this here to just find that record. You can find Index Keys in client logs or in Audit search results.
In addition to the search results use the Reset button to clear, the Prev. button to skip back to a previous search and Go to commence the search.
There is also an Export button that you can use to export the audit results to an Excel spreadsheet.
Section 2 - Finding Audit Records
If you have a particular appointment, charge, activity etc. that you'd like to view all changes for then head to the relevant client's log. You can then right click anywhere on the preview pane and select the 'View Audit History for this record'. Please note, this option is only available when logged in as the System Admin. This will take you to the audit view and display results for that Index Key. Find more information about information contained in these results in Section 3.
In cases where you don't have any entry in the log to search by (e.g where something has been deleted, for changes to system configuration, or when generally searching) you will need to use the search options detailed in Section 1 to find what you're looking for.
For example if we wanted to see whether a client has had any consultation notes deleted we would first use the Search button to select that specific client. Then we can set the Table filter to 'CONSULTATION' and the Type to 'DELETE'. This will then show us the details of any deleted consultation notes for that client.
From the audit results below we can see that a consultation has been deleted on the 08/12/2025 at 11:35:15 by user 'BB'.
Section 3 - Understanding Audit Results
Now you've found the entries you're looking for you'll need to understand what the data presented means. In the following example we'll look at an appointment that was added to the system and the had changes made to it. This appointment was found using the client log as per the steps outlined in Section 2.
All results matching the criteria you've entered will be listed in the Results section below the search options. Each entry listed represents some form of change made. To the right of the list you have your preview pane (make sure "Preview record details" is ticked in order to view this) where you can view specifics of the audit result, including what the specifics of the changes made.
In the example below we can see that the last update to this appointment modified the appointment type and duration.
- Client No. - Where the result relates a client on your system their client number will be displayed here. It will end with the six digit registration number of the system where the client was created.
- Table - The data table this result belongs to. In this example, it's APPOINTM - appointments.
- Type - The type of entry. In this case it's an INSERT record so this is the appointment first being added to the system.
- Date/Time - The date and time of this particular change to the system.
- User Inits. - The initials of the user who made this change.
- Index Key - The Index Key of this item in the system.
- Notes - Memo: you'll record of specific changes made in the preview. memo: there are no additional notes on this entry but more information may still be found in the preview.
- Processed - Alongside the status, sync server uses can use this field to determine when the change was processed by sync server.
In the preview panel to the right we see information on how the appointment appeared when it was added at this time. All major specifics are listed in the top section of the preview. When looking at additional entries all changes appear at the top of the preview before the break.
In the preview we can see exactly what was changed at this time. Only updated fields show above the break in the preview window. In this instance we see that the time of the appointment was changed to 10:30 and a new note was added to the appointment. We can see the content of the note here.
Record deleted as a result of Sync Server Transaction Request - Any audit records that show as having been deleted by a Sync Server transaction will mean that it was deleted by another system in the family and that deletion has been processed by sync server. To get further information about these records please check the audit within any systems in the sync family. The index key can be used to quickly search for that specific record.