Skip to main content
DualEntry captures an immutable audit trail for every data change in the system. This trail provides the evidence your auditors need and underpins compliance with SOC 2, SOX, and other regulatory frameworks.

​
What the audit trail captures

Every user and system action that modifies data generates an audit event. Captured actions include:
  • Record creation - when a bill, invoice, journal entry, or any other record is created.
  • Field updates - changes to any field on a record, with before and after values.
  • Status changes - transitions such as draft to posted, or open to closed.
  • Approval actions - every approval, rejection, and auto-approval from approval workflows.
  • Login events - successful and failed authentication attempts.
  • Role changes - when a user’s role or permissions are modified.
  • Period lock/unlock events - when an accounting period is locked or unlocked.
  • Bulk operations - mass updates, imports, and reclassifications, logged as a group with individual line-level detail.
Each audit event records the timestamp, user identity, IP address, action type, before/after values for changed fields, and the affected record’s type and ID.

​
Retention

DualEntry retains audit trail data by default and does not purge or age it out on its own. Retention is not a self-service setting. There is no screen in the application for changing this, so an organization that needs a different retention period, shorter or longer, should raise it with DualEntry directly. Nothing in the trail is editable or removable from the application in the meantime. The practical consequence is that the audit trail is a record you read and export, never one you curate. That immutability is the point of the control. An auditor asking whether entries could have been altered after the fact gets the same answer regardless of who they ask, because no role in the product can alter them. Export what an engagement needs while the engagement is running, rather than assuming you can reconstruct a view of the trail later on request.

​
SOC 2 and SOX compliance

DualEntry’s audit trail satisfies the common criteria for change management and logical access controls under SOC 2 Type II. Your auditor can pull activity logs scoped to any user, date range, or record type. The trail demonstrates that all changes are attributable to an identified user and that access controls are enforced consistently.
DualEntry undergoes an annual SOC 2 Type II examination. You can review our current attestation report, subprocessor list, and other security documentation on the DualEntry Trust Center. Contact your account team if you need a report or questionnaire that isn’t already published there.
For organizations subject to SOX, DualEntry provides the control triad that auditors look for. Period locking prevents changes to closed periods. Approval workflows enforce segregation of duties on workflows where self-approval is disabled. The audit trail proves who approved what and when. The audit trail records every approval action with the approver’s identity, timestamp, and comments. Combined with entity-scoped permissions, this demonstrates that no single individual can both initiate and approve a transaction on those workflows, satisfying the segregation-of-duties requirement.

​
Accessing the audit trail

You access the audit trail from Settings → Audit Trail. The interface provides filters for:
  • User - see all actions by a specific person.
  • Action type - narrow to creates, updates, deletes, approvals, or logins.
  • Record type - scope to bills, invoices, journal entries, or any other record type.
  • Date range - define a start and end date for the activity window.
Export filtered results to CSV for inclusion in auditor workpapers. The export includes all event detail fields and is timestamped for traceability. The public API does not expose audit trail events today, so there is no direct programmatic feed from the audit trail into a SIEM. To notify external systems when business records change, use webhooks, which deliver signed events for records such as invoices, bills, and customers; login and other security events are not included in webhook topics. For security event review, use the in-app filters and the CSV export.
Audit trail records are append-only. Neither users nor administrators can modify or delete audit events, even with Admin-level permissions.
Last modified on August 27, 2026