Log: runs, “Why?” and rollback

The rule log is the history of everything the rule has checked and done. Every ad account check, every action on an object and the reason for every skip are recorded here. The log shows why the rule paused an ad set or why it left it alone, and this is also where you can roll back a mistaken action.

The log works the same in test mode (Dry-run) and in live mode (Live). In Dry-run, the rule changes nothing in Facebook but writes to the log what it would have done. So before switching to Live, review the log for at least a day or two.

How to open the log

• From the rule list (Meta / TikTok → Autorules): the “Log” button in the rule row or the time in the “Last run” column — it is an “Open the rule log” link.

• From the rule builder: the “Log” button in the header.

• From a notification: clicking a notification in the notification bell opens the log of that rule. In Telegram and email, the end of the message has a Rule log: line with a link to the log.

• Via a colleague's link: the open tab and the object being checked are saved in the page address. You can send a team lead a link to the log, to the “Scheduled enables” tab or to the check of a specific object: they will see the same thing.

The log header shows the rule name, its state (“Enabled”, “Disabled” or “Deleted”), mode, level, priority, ad accounts and the time of the last run. Buttons: “Back to the rules”, “Edit rule” (or “Open rule” if your role cannot change it) and “Refresh”.

Log tabs

Runs: how to read them

A run is one check of one ad account by one rule. If a rule has three ad accounts, each scheduled launch produces three rows. Runs appear only when the rule is enabled and its scheduled time has come in the ad account. If the rule is disabled, outside its activity window, or its scheduled time has not come yet, there will be no rows.

Runs table columns

Above the table there are filters by status, ad account and period (days are counted in your time zone) and a “Refresh” button. A run with the “Running” status does not update on its own: click “Refresh” after a minute.

Run statuses

Example of reading a run

Stop-loss on the “UA Nutra 3” ad account, run at 14:30: “In scope: 42”, “Matched: 3”, “Applied: 2”, “Skipped: 1”, “Errors: 0”, “Data: Fresh · 25 min”. This means the rule checked 42 active ad sets; for three of them today's spend exceeded the threshold without deposits; two were paused until the end of the day, and one action was skipped. Expand the row and look at that ad set: for example, “Skipped: recent manual change” — the buyer enabled it by hand an hour ago, and the rule respects that decision.

Executions: what the rule did with an object

Expand a run row (the arrow on the left) to see object cards. The log contains only objects that met the conditions. Non-matching ones are visible only as a number in the “Did not match” tooltip. If you need to investigate a specific non-matching object, use the “Why not now?” tab.

The object card contains:

• Level and name (campaign, ad set or ad), object ID and ad account.

• Buttons: “Copy ID”, “Ads Manager” (opens the object in Ads Manager), “Meta section” (the table of this level for the ad account in adset.pro), “Rule history” and “Why not now?”.

• A line for each action:

  • the action with its parameters, for example “Pause until end of day” or “Daily budget: +20%, limits 20 … 500”;

  • before → after, for example “Daily budget: 100.00 USD → 120.00 USD” or “Status: Active → Paused”. If the field did not change, it shows “No change”;

  • the outcome as a colored label with the reason below it (full breakdown in the table below and in the article on reasons);

  • in case of a conflict — “Won by rule X” with a link to the winning rule's log;

  • which profile the change went through: “Via Developer token, profile …”, “Via Browser agent, profile …”, etc.;

  • the Facebook error text, if there was one (“Facebook API error: …”);

  • the “Roll back” button or the “Rolled back” label.

• The “Why?” button under the actions expands a snapshot of the conditions at the time of the decision (section below).

Executions are shown 100 per page. Above the list there are quick filters “Errors: N”, “Awaiting confirmation: N”, “Skipped: N” and the “Outcome” filter. Important records come first within a page. To see all of them, use the outcome filter.

Action outcomes

The outcome shows how a specific action on a specific object ended. Names are as in the UI.

Important. Skips by guards (“cooldown”, “daily limit”, “manual change”, “conflict”) are normal operation, not a failure. Errors are worth worrying about only if the “Errors” column regularly shows non-zero numbers or a Live rule constantly reports “no profile can make changes”.

“Why?”: snapshot of conditions

The “Why?” button on an object expands the “Why it fired” table: the values at the time of the decision for each condition. It answers the question “why did the rule decide this way”, even if the numbers have changed since then.

Above the table is a summary “Yes: N”, “No: N”, “Unknown: N”. Below the table is the “Significance threshold” if the rule has a minimum volume set: for example, “Clicks: 180 of 100 · Reached”.

Example: stop-loss

A rule from the “Stop-loss: no deposits today” template, target CPD $30. The ad set “nutra_ua_video_03” has been paused until the end of the day. “Why?” shows:

Both conditions are “Yes” and are combined with “AND”, so the rule fired. If a deposit from today's clicks arrived in the evening, that does not make the decision wrong: the snapshot honestly shows what was known at 14:30. The text above the table says exactly that: “Values as of the decision. Tracker revenue may have matured since then.”

How to read “Unknown”

“Unknown” means “there is no data to answer”, not “no”. The rule does not touch an object if the result of the conditions is “Unknown”.

• In an “AND” group: at least one “No” — the result is “No”; all “Yes” except one “Unknown” — the result is “Unknown”, and the rule does not fire.

• In an “OR” group: at least one “Yes” — the result is “Yes”, even if the others are unknown.

Example: the condition “ROI · Yesterday · cohort less than −30%”, value “—”, result “Unknown — No data”. The ad set had no spend yesterday, so there is nothing to calculate ROI from. All “Unknown” reasons are covered in the article on reasons.

Rule history for an object

The “Rule history” button on an object opens all actions of all autorules available to you on this object over the last 90 days, newest first. Here you can see, for example, that in the morning a scaling rule cut the ad set, in the afternoon a stop-loss turned it off, and at 00:00 it was enabled again.

• Each record has the rule with a link to its log, time, action, “before → after”, outcome and reason.

• There is a filter by outcome.

• From the history you can also roll back an action and expand “Why?”.

Tip. If an object “jumps around” (the budget goes up, then down), open its history: most often two rules with overlapping conditions work on the same object. Separate them by masks or priorities.

“Why not now?”

A live check of a single object against current data. Useful when you are looking at an ad set in Ads Manager and do not understand why the rule does not touch it.

1. Open the “Why not now?” tab or click the button of the same name on an object in the log: the fields are filled in automatically.

2. Enter the Facebook object ID — of a campaign, ad set or ad, digits only.

3. Select the ad account if the rule has several.

4. Click “Check”.

What the result shows:

• “Evaluated at …” — the check time and a link to Ads Manager.

• If the ad account data is stale — “The data of this ad account is stale, so the rule would skip it now.” If the ad account is skipped for another reason — “The rule would skip this ad account now: …”.

• If live is blocked — “Live actions are blocked in this ad account: Tracker attribution is not set up”.

• Plan warnings (for example, “No minimum volume threshold”).

• Scope — “In scope” or “Not in scope” and why: “Matches the filters”, “Added manually”, “Excluded”, “Filtered out”, “Filters could not decide”. The “Filters that excluded the object” block shows the specific filter and its value, for example “Name matches: *_nutra”.

• Conditions — “The rule would fire” or “The rule would not fire” with the reason, and the “Conditions now” table in the same format as “Why?”.

• What the rule would do — a list of actions or “Nothing: the object does not match the rule or is outside its scope.”

Important. The check does not take into account the pause between actions, daily limits, conflicts with other rules or the ad account budget cap: those are checked by the run itself. So “The rule would fire” does not guarantee an action on the next run. Look for the reason of an actual skip in the outcome on the “Runs” tab.

If the object is not in the ad account, you will see “Object … was not found in ad account ….” Check the ID and the ad account: campaign and ad set IDs are often confused.

Scheduled enables

When a rule sets an object to “Pause until end of day”, it promises to enable it at 00:00 in the ad account time zone. The “Scheduled enables” tab shows these promises and how they were kept.

Statuses: “Waiting” (00:00 has not come yet or a retry is pending), “Sending”, “Done”, “Cancelled”, “Failed” (retries are exhausted, the object stayed off). Attempt results: “Enabled”, “Enabled (confirmed)”, “Cancelled”, “Failed”, “Will retry”, “Skipped”.

• Enabling is cancelled if the object was touched after the pause: “Object was changed after the pause”, “Object was edited in Facebook after the pause”, “The pause was rolled back”, “Another rule pauses the object permanently”. The rule does not enable what a person or another rule turned off after the pause.

• The object is enabled even if the rule has since been disabled or deleted: the pause was set by the rule, and the promise holds. The rule state is shown in the result: “Rule active”, “Rule paused”, “Rule deleted”, “Rule not found”.

• If enabling fails (no profile, token, Facebook limits), the rule retries at increasing intervals (5, 10, 20, 40, 60 minutes) within 24 hours after 00:00. The rule owner gets a notification if the object stays off. More in the article “Notifications”.

Rollback

If a rule did the wrong thing — turned off a live ad set or raised the budget of the wrong one — the action can be rolled back. A rollback returns the object to the state it was in before the rule's action and immediately sends this change to Facebook.

How to roll back, step by step

1. Open the rule log → the “Runs” tab → expand the run you need. Or open “Rule history” on the object.

2. Find the action with the “Applied” outcome and click “Roll back”.

3. In the “Roll back the action” dialog, check the “after the rule action → after rollback” line, for example “Status: Paused → Active” or “Daily budget: 120.00 USD → 100.00 USD”.

4. Click “Roll back”.

5. Read the result:

   • “The action was rolled back.” — done; the record gets the “Rolled back” label;

   • “The rollback was sent. Waiting for Facebook to confirm it.” — check the log in a few minutes;

   • “This action was already rolled back (…), nothing was sent again.” — a rollback already took place;

   • “The rollback was not applied: …” — the reason is in the text; the rollback can be retried.

What happens after a rollback:

• The rollback is recorded as a separate run with the “Rollback” label in the “Started” column, and the original action gets the “Rolled back” label.

• Rolling back a “Pause until end of day” cancels its enable at 00:00.

• For rules, a rollback is the same as a manual change. During the “Pause after a manual change” (24 hours by default), rules do not change the rolled-back field of the object: the status after rolling back a pause, or the budget after rolling back a budget change. Otherwise the rule would immediately repeat the same action.

• The change is sent through a profile available to the person rolling back, not to the rule owner.

Who can roll back

The team owner, team lead, tech specialist and admin — the roles that can change rules. The “Meta autorules” plan feature is also required. A buyer sees the “Rolled back” label but has no “Roll back” button. Without the plan feature, the log opens read-only, and the button is disabled with the tooltip “Rollback is not available on your plan”.

When a rollback is impossible

Tip. Roll back as soon as you notice a mistake. The longer you wait, the higher the chance that someone else changes the object and the rollback is refused.

Retention and access

Who sees what: a buyer — logs of rules where they are the owner; a team lead — their own and their buyers'; the team owner — all team rules. A deleted rule is kept together with its log. After the rule owner changes, old records stay with the previous owner, and the new owner may not see them.

What to read next

• Notifications — what arrives in the notification bell, Telegram and email.

• Why a rule did not fire: reasons, limitations and FAQ — the full table of reasons from the log.

• Schedule, guards and priorities — pause, limits, pause after a manual change.

• Preview, test and live modes.

• All articles in the “Autorules” section.