{"id":"concept:audit-trail","kind":"concept","label":"Audit Trail","synonyms":["paper trail","traceability"],"definition":"An audit trail is the permanent, traceable record connecting every posted number in a set of books back to when it was posted, who or what posted it, and why.","summary":"Not a separate report — a property every entry already has. Every journal entry in BalanceMCP carries a date, a memo, a source (manual, import, or ai), and the user it was posted under, so any number can be traced back to how it actually got there.","explanation":["An audit trail is what turns a ledger from a list of numbers into something a person — or an AI, or an auditor — can actually trace. It's the connective tissue between a total on a report and the specific events that produced it: which entry, posted when, by whom, for what reason.","In BalanceMCP, this isn't a separate feature you turn on. Every journal entry is permanently tied to the user account it was posted under, the exact moment it was posted, and a source tag recording whether it came from a manual action, a bank import turning into a categorized transaction, or an AI assistant acting directly. That combination is what lets a $1,200 number be traced back not just to \"Subcontractors,\" but to the specific bank transaction that was categorized on a specific date, or the specific instruction an AI assistant acted on.","The memo on each entry does real work here too — for a manual entry or an AI-posted one, it's often the only human-readable explanation of what actually happened, and a specific memo like \"reversal of misclassified rent payment\" is worth far more months later than a blank field next to two numbers.","What makes this a genuine audit trail rather than a nice-to-have is that it can't be quietly broken. The journal is append-only — nothing posted can be edited or deleted, only reversed with a new, visible entry — so the trail a number leaves behind can't later be erased or rewritten, even by mistake."],"commonMistakes":["Assuming the audit trail is a separate report to run — it's a property every entry already carries (date, memo, source, user), visible through the general ledger.","Leaving a manual entry's memo blank or generic, which erases the one piece of the audit trail a future reader can't get any other way.","Assuming an AI-posted entry is somehow less traceable than a manually posted one — both carry the exact same source, timestamp, and user fields."],"category":"fundamentals","questions":[{"question":"Do I have to run a special report to see the audit trail?","answer":"No — every entry already carries its date, memo, source, and posting user. The general ledger and the journal itself are where you see it, not a separate feature."},{"question":"Can an audit trail be erased or rewritten?","answer":"No — the journal is append-only at the database level, so nothing posted can be edited or deleted. A correction is a new, visible reversing entry, never a change to the original."}],"url":"/glossary/audit-trail","relatedTo":[{"id":"concept:journal-entry","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Ajournal-entry"},{"id":"concept:posting","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Aposting"},{"id":"concept:memo","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Amemo"},{"id":"concept:audit-log","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Aaudit-log"},{"id":"concept:ai-bookkeeping","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Aai-bookkeeping"},{"id":"concept:reversing-entry","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Areversing-entry"},{"id":"guide:why-an-ai-cannot-edit-your-ledger","relationship":"references","weight":0.7,"api":"/api/knowledge/guide%3Awhy-an-ai-cannot-edit-your-ledger"},{"id":"tool:general_ledger","relationship":"references","weight":0.7,"api":"/api/knowledge/tool%3Ageneral_ledger"},{"id":"topic:auditability","relationship":"references","weight":0.7,"api":"/api/knowledge/topic%3Aauditability"}],"referencedBy":[{"id":"concept:double-entry-bookkeeping","label":"Double-Entry Bookkeeping","url":"/glossary/double-entry-bookkeeping"},{"id":"concept:general-ledger","label":"General Ledger","url":"/glossary/general-ledger"},{"id":"concept:posting","label":"Posting","url":"/glossary/posting"},{"id":"concept:reversing-entry","label":"Reversing Entry","url":"/glossary/reversing-entry"},{"id":"concept:memo","label":"Memo","url":"/glossary/memo"},{"id":"concept:audit-log","label":"Audit Log","url":"/glossary/audit-log"},{"id":"guide:what-is-mcp","label":"What MCP Is, and Why an Accounting Ledger Needs One","url":"/guides/what-is-mcp"},{"id":"guide:why-an-ai-cannot-edit-your-ledger","label":"Why an AI Cannot Simply Edit Your Ledger","url":"/guides/why-an-ai-cannot-edit-your-ledger"},{"id":"tool:export_book","label":"Get your books out as spreadsheets, for an accountant or yourself","url":"/tools/export_book"},{"id":"topic:auditability","label":"How an AI bookkeeping audit trail is produced","url":"/accounting-for-ai/auditability"}],"license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","attribution":"BalanceMCP — https://balancemcp.com"}