Definition
An audit trail is a chronological record of who created, changed, approved or deleted a record, when they did it and what changed.
What is an audit trail used for?
Auditors, finance managers and owners rely on it to trace any figure back to the actions behind it and to spot unauthorised or careless changes. A useful audit trail is readable, attached to the record it describes and can’t be edited by the people it records. In accounting, the trail extends to journal entries: posted entries are reversed rather than edited, so the original stays visible.
Example: a purchase order’s history shows it was created by a buyer, its prices revised by EUR 300 with the reason “supplier price increase”, then issued by the purchasing manager.
See reversing entry for how corrections keep the trail intact.