If you understand the cliche, “too many cooks in the kitchen”, you’ll undoubtedly appreciate Facebook’s receipt button.
Okay, so it’s not actually called the receipt button. However, you will come to recognize it as such.
For instance, when a client accidentally makes a change but swears they didn’t touch anything. Or perhaps when someone decides to add their inept intern to help manage the Facebook Page. These are just a few cases in which a receipt button will be most helpful.
Read on to see how you can find, and use, Facebook’s receipt button.
Why We Use Facebook’s Receipt Button
On a business page, or Facebook Page, there are two ways to check in on what’s been happening. As someone who is in charge of everything that goes on within those Pages, your job is to know ALL THE THINGS that happen.
This can be difficult if there are several people from say, both the agency side and the client side who have access or Admin rights to the Page(s).
To keep an eagle eye on things, you’ll want to become well acquainted with two areas …
First, there’s the Activity Log. This is where you can see things like content you’ve posted or comments those posts have received. You can find it under ‘Settings’ in Facebook Business Manager.
And while the Activity Log is important, it’s not what we’re calling Facebook’s receipt button.
Second, and most importantly, Facebook has a tool called ‘Page Management History.” This little gem is what we call the receipts button.
We call it this because there have been several instances in our eight-year history when someone on the client side has touched things. And not in a good way. A few examples …
- Maybe a client accidentally shut down a running campaign that was killing it (true story).
- Perhaps the client added someone to the Page who had no idea what they were doing and they deleted an entire Facebook Page (true story).
- Maybe someone on your client’s team even went in and tried to remove someone your team from being able to manage their Pages, even though they pay you to do so (also a true story).
In any case, you’ll want to be able to view “receipts” to be able to understand when these things have been done, and by whom. Because sometimes, just sometimes, the other side will deny they ever touched anything (you guessed it: true story).
Facebook’s receipt button can hep you professionally show (versus tell) who and when someone threw a wench in the plans.
Finding Facebook’s Receipt Button
Here’s how to access your Pages ‘Page Management History’.
- Click Settings at the top of your Business Page in Facebook Business Manager.
- Click Page Management History in the left column.
- Added and removed Page admins
- Changed Page roles of Page admins (example: changing the permission of an admin from Admin to Editor)
- Changed Page Settings
- Added, removed or left groups
- Your Page management history will not show actions taken by systems users and actions taken before November 1st, 2019.
- You can also download your business history in Business Manager — here’s how.
We know that most clients aim to be good ones, but I’ll be darned if you don’t run into at least one instance where Facebook’s receipt button is a life saver!
When To “Bring Receipts”
I’ve mentioned a few examples above. These are all (sadly) true stories of when we’ve needed to pull receipts. Another example would be if you land in Facebook Jail.
First of all, if you haven’t heard of Facebook Jail let me be the first to tell you to AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS.
Facebook Jail is the term we use when Facebook suspends our clients’ Facebook Pages for breaking Facebook Community Standards. This can be done deliberately or accidentally. Facebook will usually let you know with a warning that looks something like this:
Facebook Jail can happen for a myriad of reasons, including
- Terms of Service violations
- Suspicious logins
- Spammy behavior
When one of our clients ended up in “jail” our Facebook Rep recommended that the client’s Pages NOT join Facebook Groups as those Pages. So, we diligently went in and deleted all of the Groups certain Pages belonged to, as well as told the client that they should not join any Groups until we were able to get released from jail.
And yet, in the following days …
As you can see, not everyone followed those directions. And when we went to the client because our jail time was extended due to not following directions, they PROMISED us no one from their side touched things, to which we replied with the above receipt.
Armed with this information, we were able to
- Pinpoint those who did not understand or could not follow the rules
- See days and times the infractions happened
- Understand, from our side, which Groups needed to be removed again
To sum it up, people mean well, but not everyone finds it easy to follow directions. Especially when the directions (ahem, Facebook’s especially) seem wonky or weird.
Facebook’s Receipt Button really saved us here.
Agencies & CYA
Unfortunately, agency life often means making sure you CYA or “cover your arse.” This is especially true when you have too many cooks in the kitchen. Think of it less as being a hall monitor and more of a way to protect your brand from people who aren’t intimately familiar with Facebook.
Again, people mean well, but when they don’t know how to follow Terms of Service for any given site they’re managing, it can spell danger for your brand or company in more than one way!
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