Audit trail

A record of inputs, evidence, decisions, approvals, actions, and outcomes sufficient for later review.

Editorial owner
VMCSoft Digital
Last reviewed
2026-07-28
Review by
2027-01-28
Editorial content risk
lowPublishing review classification—not your task assessment.

Definition

A record of inputs, evidence, decisions, approvals, actions, and outcomes sufficient for later review.

Practical test

Could an independent reviewer reconstruct what evidence was available, what changed, who approved it, and what happened afterward?

Example

For a CRM write, retain the proposed arguments, before-and-after values, approver, execution result, and any rollback.

What to record

For audit trail to be operational rather than a reassuring label, record stable identifiers for inputs, sources, checks, approvals, actions, outcomes, and versions. If those facts cannot be observed or tested, do not treat the term itself as evidence that the workflow is safe.