Auditing Overview

This topic provides an overview of the auditing processes.

The system provides several different types of auditing:

Event auditing: Any time a specified event occurs (for example, every time a user opens a form), a message is logged in the Audit Log. You can turn this audit log on or off, and you can customize the types of events that are logged.
Transaction auditing: Whenever certain types of transactions are posted, the system automatically logs the information into files that can generally be printed as reports.
Project auditing: You can turn on auditing for the Projects module and then track milestones through an Audit tab on several of the forms.

Note: We strongly recommend that you enable audit logging only if there is a specific need to check something, and enable it for only a short time. The audit trail processing is extensive and robust. While enabled, it will reduce system performance and create a large number of process records in the log.

Material Transactions

Material Transaction (matltran) records provide an audit trail for material transactions. Material transactions are created when you perform these tasks:

Issue an item to, or withdraw an item from, a job
Finish a job
Start a job
Move an item to the next operation in a job
Ship or return customer orders
Receive or return purchase orders
Change the quantity on hand or cost of an item
Move a quantity
Add a new location

You can print this audit trail with the Material Transactions Report.

Use the Delete Material Transactions utility to delete most types of material transactions, except End of Period Costing transactions. End of Period Costing transactions include Just-In-Time (JIT) Production Transactions, Production Schedule Complete Transactions, Production Schedule Scrap Transactions, Work Center Labor Transactions, Work Center Machine Time Transactions, and Work Center Material Transactions. You can run Delete End of Period Costing Transactions to delete End of Period Costing transactions.

Caution: Be sure to run the Material Transactions Report before you delete any material transactions, to preserve the audit trail. When a material transaction is deleted, references to that transaction from any ledger or journal records will be cleared. If you then try to view detail on a ledger or journal previously referenced to the deleted material transaction record, the system will display a message saying that the record is not available.

Inventory Count Transactions

Prior to posting inventory cycle counts, run the Cycle Count Variance Report to provide an accounting audit trail for any variances encountered from the original quantities.

Before using the Physical Inventory Count Posting utility to post inventory quantities to the Quantity On-Hand field, we recommend that you run the Preadjustment Report to generate an accounting audit trail for visibility for count discrepancies.

Use the Physical Inventory Records Purge utility to erase the contents of the Physical Inventory files after the entire physical inventory is approved and posted, and the auditors have reviewed and approved the results. The purpose of this option is to release disk space taken up by the Physical Inventory file. Although the contents of the file are erased, an audit trail of the Physical Inventory posting is still available. The Item/Warehouse file contains these fields for reference purposes: Physical Inventory Count (quantity counted) and Physical Inventory Date (date the posting occurred).

Labor and Production Transactions

Job Transaction (jobtran) records provide an audit trail for labor transactions (job, production schedule, JIT, and work center). You insert Job Transaction records into the jobtran file manually and use the Job Labor Transaction Posting feature to post them. Be sure to run the Job Transactions Report before you delete any job transactions, to preserve the audit trail. You can delete this type of record only by using the Delete Job Transactions utility.

Invoice Transactions

Before you post invoices, debit memos, and credit memos through the Invoice Posting activity, print the Invoice Transaction Report as an audit trail of the posted items.

Financial Transactions

Use the A/R Draft Purge utility to delete canceled, paid, and voided drafts. It produces a register of the purged drafts as an audit trail.

Before you post A/P voucher and adjustment transactions, print the Voucher Transaction Report as an audit trail.

Before you use the Mass Journal Posting utility or the Ledger Posting for Journal utility to post transactions from one or more journals to the ledger, print the Journal Transaction Report as an audit trail of the items that will be posted. Also, before using Journal Compress to reduce the number of transactions in a journal, you must print the Journal Transaction Report.

Employee Direct Deposit Transactions

On the Direct Deposit Banks form, enter the General Ledger account number that will be credited and debited when a direct deposit is posted for an employee using this bank. This account maintains an audit trail of direct deposits to the bank.

Project Auditing

When you set up Project Parameters for revenue milestones and invoice milestones, you can enable audit trails. The audit information then appears in an Audit tab on the Revenue Milestones, Estimate Revenue Milestones, and Invoice Milestones forms.