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We have clients reluctant to switch from Sage as they like an audit trail report to see what has been posted and, whilst you can find things in Xero when you are used to it, - it is not an easy report to pull off when there are multiple users

Totally agree! A proper audit trail is essential. Your suggestions for the report are spot-on. It's so frustrating when prior year data changes.

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We urgently require a complete audit trail report. Specifically on Timesheet, leave and the whole payroll section. There is no history/tracking in the whole payroll section as to who has actioned what and with Xero's limitations on payroll approvers, it is imperative an audit trail is implemented asap.

A lot of ideas have been posted on H&N (more commonly known as "Audit trail reporting") on this forum, and its predecessor forum too, but can we try this again, one more time?

Xero needs to revamp its H&N report, to meet basic software security guidelines. At the moment, error and fraud CANNOT be easily detected, at least without of a lot of unnecessary work.

See the link below for Audit trail requirements in software from countries like India that take this seriously.

Here are my 6 suggestions, of which 2-5 are the really important ones:

1. Export - H&N report needs to be exportable to Excel.

2. Full transactions - Transactions should be fully visible, not truncated in "Note" form. To deep dive into audit trail you need as many columns as there are on the Account Transaction report

3. Full History - a good audit trail will be a detail report. The whole history of every transaction in all of its gruesome or geeky detail needs to be on the face of the report. If you are looking for a needle in a haystack, it doesn't help to put the hay into small bags , as we then need to open all of the bags to examine the hay! Just let us examine the whole trail without clicking on each transaction and second guessing which transaction may be the right one.

4. Filters - it needs way more filters, as you would have on the Account Transaction report (eg Date of transaction, not just the date it was Modified)

5. Audit ID number - a unique ID is needed for every transaction. (an ID is actually viewable in the "Journal report" but crazily enough, after all these years, Xero still haven't made this ID a unique ID as it changes on every edit of the transaction. This is like finding your needle to find that someone has greased it and it falls straight back into the haystack!)

6. Technical log vs Audit log (see second link below) - these logs are not separated out making it harder to trawl through eg the date the document was uploaded is known as the technical log, and shouldn't be on display with the transactional or true Audit log.

So please Xero, up your game and whatever is easier, prioritise this really important report, perhaps revamp the Journal report, which is much closer to what we need than the History & Notes report.

As mentioned above:

For a classic Audit trail report see here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9rP24cQ0ps

Audit trail requirements now legally required in India
(Recording an audit trail of every transaction,
Creating an audit log of every change that's made in the books of accounts, Capturing the date details about when changes are made, Ensuring that the audit trail can't be disabled)
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/localfunctionality/india/india-audit-trail-edit-logs-accounting-software

please please please can you get on with this?

Xero please play Snakes and Ladders and move this to the top of your
list of "product ideas" !

I know you have lots of ideas to deal with some 1030 from Accountants and bookkeepers and 3634 from Small businesses...

But this is like so important.

Don't say you haven't been warned.

Does anyone actually read these comments?

Anyway in case you do and you have no idea what Audit trail and why History and Notes really doesn't hit the mark (do you want me to do a Ted Talk on this?) have a look at criteria for good audit trail here:

https://tallysolutions.com/accounting/why-do-we-need-an-audit-trail-for-businesses/

🙏

This is a necessity

Eleanor thanks, the New Journal report, is a big improvement on the old one!

Regarding audit trail, it does have both "posted date" and "posted by" columns, so small round of applause.

However there is a still unforunately a FUNDAMENTAL flaw in the "journal report" (journal in Xero terminology means transaction, not a "manual journal" as accountants would understand it, although you can still filter for Manual journals should you want with the "more" button)

The flaw is as follows. Xero assigns a "Journal ID" which is great - the core of good Audit trail. However, for some reason I just dont get, Xero doesnt understand that editing a transaction, SHOULD NOT in any circumstance lead to Xero amending the Journal ID!

A Journal ID gets assgined when you create a new transaction. It shouldn't give a new one on an edit! As it is the Journal ID facility is completely unreliable because if the transaction (sorry, journal) has been edited, you will no longer find that ID, as it has been deleted from the history. (bang head against the wall 3 times)

Other minor flaws:

....transaction type (Source type) is missing (duhh, reminds me of the VAT reports, where transaction types are also omitted!)

....Export to Excel button (the one I have been requesting for years) is there, but doesnt seem to work (maybe it's me but I doubt it)

So back to the drawing board (hopefully not for too long) Xero programmers

If you do get these fixes out soon, I would try to get the New Journal report into a full blown Audit trail report with permuations of each edit showing, after which you could dump History and Notes altogether, maybe into the same place edited Journal IDs get dumped ;)

Hooray, they've finally updated the journal report that fulfills this need!

How is it even possible that this software has been around for the time it has been without having this feature? It is very time consuming to go transaction by transaction to see who did what for a client account.

My application which is currently in development called RecHound will include everything requested on this product idea.

You can head to our website at www.rechound.com to join our mailing list to be notified when this becomes available.

We currently have a video with a transaction listing view, you can see there is a "show voided transactions" button in this (not demonstrated, but is currently working). We will also be adding transaction line numbers and journal numbers too. Also, will be adding a data dump file on our homepage which you can filter by account, date etc.

Thanks,
Alex

Can this include Payroll? An Audit trail for payroll is essential not a "nice to have" - who, when and what. Who made the original booking, when it was done (date & time) and details. And, almost more important, the same for any subsequent changes.

Hi Alex - that's great news!

I'd certainly be interested in this if you could post the details here when ready as you've suggested. It's a shame Xero can't have this integrated into the system (it's an absolute basic tool for accountants) but this would be very helpful!

Thanks, Ellie

Hi all,

I have good news on this idea - I am currently developing an application which will have this included as a feature. I have used the bullet points here as a reference to how we want this specific feature to work because I think this is quite well set out.

Currently we have a 'last edited' date column, along with a 'transaction entry' date column as well (alongside the journal date too obviously). Each transaction will have its own specific identifier, as well as each full journal entry having its own identifier as well. We have a switch which will add in all the voided transactions too, so you will be able to see literally every transaction ever posted, whether it's viewable in Xero or not.

Our application is foundationally a balance sheet reconciliation management tool, which will also allow the reconciliation of individual accounts by netting off your Xero transactions line by line. Great for clearing accounts. We noticed that we needed to generate our own 'audit report' of sorts in order to build our app, so we may as well add it as a feature too!

We are currently heavy in the testing phase for this. We will have a website with a mailing list up and running in the coming weeks - I will post it up here as soon as it's available for anyone interested.

Thanks!
Alex

I can't believe there is no audit trail. This is a terrible omission.

Agreed. But please do not in turn take away the existing method, where at each transaction you can instantly see the changes made at the bottom left corner. That is one incredibly useful tool.

Honestly the fact that there is no true audit trail for a bookkeeping software is so very poor! this needs to address and be more like Quickbooks or Sage 50

I would support this request as Audit Trial Report can save a lot of time to try and troubleshoot how final accounts or monthly close accounts was changed without Advisors knowing. This helps Xero keeps accounts integrity as all voids and corrections are strictly viewable in Audit Trials.

I find the xero audit trail painful. To be of value to me I would also like to see quantity as a choice

I am horrified that this level of audit trail is not available - how on earth does this even meet audit standards? I will stick with QB which shows you every change.