Viewing the Audit Trail

The overall Audit Trail can be viewed through the main menu, View / Audit Trail.  When done from here, it will include all entries no matter what records are involved (this can be also be filtered, see below).

You'll also find an "Audit Trail" button at the bottom of Reservation Details, Customer Details, Site Details, Vendor Details, and the Edit Inventory Item dialogs.  The Audit Trail list from these will be specific entries which affect that particular record.  This may include related records -- for instance, the Audit Trail for a Reservation will also include any changes to its Customer, Transactions, and optionally any linked Reservations.

Note: Unlike many reports, there is no "Auto-generate" option for the Audit Trail-- you must click "Generate Report" before anything will show up.  This is because it can take significant time to generate this report, depending on how much data you have and how many days past you're trying to view.

Before generating the report, select the date range, and More Filtering needed and options you want.  Then click Generate Report.  If you need to make any changes to the filtering or options, you'll need to click Generate Report again to refresh the report.

Note that when viewed from a Reservation, the From date defaults to the Reservation's creation date (since there's no need to go farther back than that).  For other record types, it defaults to one week, and if done from the main menu it defaults to only the current day.

What's in the Audit Trail -- To see what kinds of things are included in the Audit Trail, go to the Filters.  There you will see a list of entry types.  Note that the "record creation" type is only used for Operator records.  Reservations and Transactions already have a field for Date Made, and other record types are not particularly date-sensitive.  

A note about Field Changes -- It is assumed that any change from being "blank" to some other non-blank value is an initial value, not a change.  These not recorded in the audit trail -- if there is no further change, then that value will still be found in the record.  Only changes between one value and another (including a non-blank value back to blank) are recorded in the audit trail, so you will have a record of all past non-blank values that a field contained.

Viewing details -- If you need to see more details about a particular entry, select the entry in the list and click the button "View the selected entry details" (or just double-click the entry).  The full text of the details can be seen, as well as more details of the record involved (if applicable).  For some common record types like Reservations and Customers, you can also use "View the selected Entry's Record", which will open the appropriate Details dialog for the record responsible for that audit entry.

Once an entry is open (in "Audit Trail Entry Details"), there will be a button to View Record's Fields.  If the entry is associated with a data record (and assuming the record still exists), that will open the record so you can see all of its fields in raw format, and will also show the Date/Time last changed for each field, if available.  The date/time is only set for a field after it's initially set to a non-blank value, so this will be empty for any field that has not changed since it was initially set.  Also note that this information is not available for changes made in versions 9.2 or earlier.  The date/time information is primarily used for data synchronization and is not meant to be used for actual change tracking by users.

Editing entries -- Audit trail entries cannot be deleted or edited in any way, even by the highest level operator -- this would defeat the purpose of an audit trail.