Audit Trail
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.
In short
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.
Also called: paper trail, traceability
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.
What people get wrong
- 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.
Common questions
- Do I have to run a special report to see the audit trail?
- 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.
- Can an audit trail be erased or rewritten?
- 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.
Machine-readable: /api/knowledge/concept:audit-trail