Email log

“Did you send it?” is one of the most common things a pet business gets asked, and until now the honest answer was “I think so”. The email log records every email Pet Central sends — confirmations, reminders, invoices, report cards, walk summaries, newsletters — and keeps a copy of what was in it.

Three places to look

The whole log is under Pet Central → Email log, searchable by address or subject. A customer’s own record carries their last ten under Emails sent. And in the staff app, opening a client shows the same history, so you can answer the question standing on their doorstep.

Send it again

Every entry has a Send again button that re-sends the message exactly as it went the first time. The copy is logged too, marked as a resend, so the history shows both and shows which was which.

Failures are recorded as well

If your mail server rejects a message, the log records that and the reason. That is the entry worth finding: a bounce is the difference between “they ignored it” and “their address is wrong”.

Which route it went by

Every entry names the route: smtp for your own mail server, wp_mail for your website’s own mail. A message that failed on your mail server and then went the second way shows both lines — the failure with your server’s own words, and the send that worked. Where it took more than one attempt, the entry says how many.

How long it is kept

90 days by default, adjustable under Settings → Business. Because a copy of each message is kept, the log holds real text — so it is pruned automatically rather than growing forever. Set it to 0 to keep everything.

Example

A customer rings to say she never got her booking confirmation. You open her record, see it went out on the 12th and did not bounce, and press Send again while she is still on the phone.

FAQ

Does it log emails from other plugins?
It logs anything sent through WordPress from this site, which in practice is nearly all of it. Anything Pet Central sends is definitely there, including over your own SMTP server.

Can staff read customers’ emails?
Anyone who can open the staff app sees the subjects and whether they sent. Reading the message back is admin-only, on the email log screen.

Does Send again make a new booking or invoice?
No. It sends the same message again and nothing else — no records change, no numbers are issued.

One says it cannot be sent again.
A very large message — usually one with a route map or photos in it — is logged without keeping a copy, because storing it would put megabytes into the log. The record of it is there; the body is not.

I turned logging off. Did it delete anything?
No. Turning it off stops new records being kept; what is already there stays until its retention runs out.

What does “Sent on a later attempt” mean?
Your mail server would not take it at the time, so it was held and sent when the server came back. The line says how long it waited. Nothing was lost and nobody had to do anything.

What does “Given up after” mean?
Neither your mail server nor your website could send it across four attempts over about an hour and twenty minutes, so it was stopped rather than retried for ever. This is the entry to act on: the message was not delivered. Send again once your mail is working, and check the SMTP settings under Settings → Emails.

What does the route column mean?
Which way that message actually left. smtp is your own mail server, set up under Settings → Emails. wp_mail is your website’s own mail, used either because you have not set up a mail server or because yours was not answering at the time. outbox is a message that was held and tried again later.

Where do I stop it filling up?
Settings → Business → Email log. The default is 90 days.

Customers say emails are not arriving.
Check Send emails from under Settings → Emails. It must be an address on your own domain. A Gmail, Outlook or BT address there will be rejected or sent to spam by most providers, because those domains publish rules saying only their own servers may send as them — and your website is not one of their servers. Left blank, Pet Central uses an address on your site’s domain, which is the safe default.