Audit control

Posted periods can be locked so they cannot be quietly edited, and every change to a transaction is recorded with the user who made it.

• Lock the books up to a date; entries before it cannot be added or altered.
• An audit trail on every transaction recording what changed, when and by whom.
• The trail follows the transaction, so it is there when you open it.
• Filter the log by user, date, transaction type or table.
• Transactions are never silently deleted — the trail records that too.
• Year end is an explicit, recorded action.
• Transaction reversal can be enforced for all dates, so a posted entry is corrected by a reversing entry rather than edited in place.

Where to find it System › Audit Control  ·  System › Audit Log  ·  System › Yearend

Locking a period

1. Open System › Audit Control and enter the date in Close Books up to. From then on, no transaction dated on or before it can be added, changed or deleted.
2. Tick Enforce transaction reversal to forbid editing posted transactions altogether: a mistake is corrected by a reversing entry, so the original stays on record.
3. Tick Activate Audit trail to record every save, post and delete with the user and the moment; Remove Audit trail up to prunes old entries.

Reading the log

1. System › Audit Log: filter by employee, action (saved, posted, deleted…), reference or date, then Continue.
2. Each row names the table, the reference, the form it was done on, the action, and who did it. The ID links back to the record where it still exists.

Year end, precisely

1. Year end (System › Yearend) posts one GL transaction that clears every income and expense account to the retained earnings account you choose. It can be run yearly, quarterly or monthly.
2. That closing entry is excluded from the income statement of the period it falls in, so the statement still shows the result.
3. The entry appears in General Ledger › Reports like any other and can be edited or deleted if it was run at the wrong date.
4. Year end does not lock the books. Set Close Books up to in Audit Control afterwards, once the period is reconciled.
5. Before removing an old audit trail, check what your jurisdiction requires; ten years is a common retention period.

From the blog

• Enhanced audit log in SQL-Ledger — SQL-Ledger has this powerful audit log feature which records users actions (adding, editing, deletion transactions) in a database table named ‘audittrail’.