P4 Software / cifraHQ

Audit Trail

Audit Trail

The Audit Trail is CifraHQ's definitive financial record. Every invoice, payment, expense, Inventory adjustment, Payroll run, transfer, and manual journal entry posts here as a sequence of debit and credit lines, in the exact order they were recorded. Nothing in the application bypasses it. If a number shows up on the Trial Balance, the General Ledger, the Income Statement, the Balance Sheet, or any tax form, you can find the rows that produced it on this page.

When a transaction looks wrong on a report or in a list, the Audit Trail is where you start the investigation. When an external auditor asks for backup on any line item, this is where you export it from.

Where to find it

Go to Accounting > Audit.

The Audit Trail page showing every GL line in chronological order, with timestamp, posting date, GL Entry code, account, debit/credit type, amount, and running balance.

The Audit Trail in CifraHQ. Every row is one side (debit or credit) of one journal entry; rows that share the same GL Entry code form one balanced transaction.

How to read a row

Each row in this grid is one leg of a journal entry. A balanced journal entry will appear as two or more rows that share the same GL Entry code, with debits and credits totalling the same amount. The grouping under one GL Entry is what matters for Accounting; the individual row is what matters for tracing a single account's history.

Column What it tells you
Timestamp The wall-clock instant CifraHQ wrote the row. Useful for "when did this actually happen?" investigations and for distinguishing two postings that share a posting date.
Posting date The Accounting date that the entry hits the GL. This is the date that decides which financial period (and which tax period) the line lands in. It can differ from Timestamp when a user backdates a document.
GL Entry The journal entry code (for example GL-00000030). Click it to open the full multi-line journal entry and confirm it balances. All rows sharing this code are legs of the same transaction.
Line The 1-based line number inside that journal entry. Combined with GL Entry, it uniquely identifies the row.
Account The GL account code the leg posted to. Click it to jump to the account ledger and see every line that ever touched the account.
Account name Human-readable name for the account, useful when the code alone is not enough.
Type Debit or Credit. Determines which side of the account the amount lands on.
Amount The debit or credit amount in your tenant's base currency. The amount is always positive; the Type column is what tells you the sign.
Balance The running balance of the Account immediately after this row posts. Lets you see, at a glance, what the account stood at after every individual leg.
Reference code The source document code that triggered the entry (for example INV-0042, BP-00012, NOM00000008). This is the link from a journal line back to the business document that created it.
Reference type The kind of business document (Invoice, BillPayment, PayrollRun, JournalEntry, InventoryAdjustment, etc.). Combined with Reference code, this gives you a complete back-pointer.
Comments Free-form note attached to the line, usually written by whichever subsystem produced the entry (for example Payroll writes Net wages NOM00000008, taxes write ISR payable NOM00000007).

Toolbar actions

Action What it does
Refresh Re-runs the query against the server. Use it after posting a new document in another tab to confirm the entry showed up.
Excel Export Exports the currently filtered, sorted view (not the entire database) to .xlsx. Match it to the on-screen filters before clicking.
PDF Export Same as Excel Export but produces a .pdf for sharing with auditors or attaching to an email.
Columns Show or hide columns. Hidden columns are remembered per user. Use it to declutter the grid for a focused review.
Search Free-text search across the visible rows. Type a reference code, an account name, or part of a comment to narrow the list quickly.
Drag a column header here to group its column Drag any column header into the band above the grid to group rows by it. Common groupings: by Account to see per-account totals, by Reference type to count document types, by Posting date for a daily summary.
Funnel icon (per column header) Excel-style filter for that column. Combine multiple column filters to drill into very specific subsets (for example Type = Debit AND Account = 720000 AND Posting date in March 2026).

How to use it

Trace one document end to end

When a user asks "what did this invoice actually post?":

  1. Filter Reference code = the document code (for example INV-0042).
  2. The grid now shows every leg the document produced: revenue, AR, taxes, COGS, Inventory.
  3. Confirm the rows for that GL Entry sum to zero (debits = credits).
  4. Click the GL Entry link on any row to open the full journal entry view if you need the consolidated picture.

Audit a single account

When you need to know everything that ever touched an account:

  1. Filter Account = the account code (for example 234000 for Federal Payroll Taxes Payable).
  2. Sort by Posting date ascending.
  3. The Balance column now reads as the account's running balance over time, leg by leg.
  4. Export to Excel for a permanent paper trail.

Investigate a period before closing

Before you close a month or quarter:

  1. Filter Posting date by the period range.
  2. Group by Reference type to count entries per document class (how many Invoices, how many payments, how many manual journals).
  3. Group by Account to scan for any account with unexpectedly large or unexpectedly small activity.
  4. Look for JournalEntry reference types you didn't expect; manual journals are the most common source of period-close surprises.

Reconcile against your bank

When the bank statement and your bank GL account disagree:

  1. Filter Account = your bank GL account code.
  2. Filter Posting date = the bank statement period.
  3. Compare line by line against the bank statement. Every transit on the bank side should have one matching row here.
  4. The reverse is also true: any row here without a corresponding bank line is either uncleared (in transit) or evidence of a posting error worth investigating.

Find a specific user's day

When you need to know what a clerk did this morning:

  1. Filter Timestamp by today.
  2. Group by Reference code to see each document they worked on, with all its legs grouped together.
  3. Combine with the Comments column for additional context the user (or the subsystem) wrote at posting time.

Common patterns you will see

Reference type What it means Typical legs
Invoice A customer sales invoice Debit AR, Credit Revenue, Credit Tax Payable, plus COGS and Inventory if stock-tracked
Bill A vendor bill Debit Expense (or Inventory), Debit Tax Receivable, Credit AP
BillPayment Payment to a vendor Debit AP, Credit Bank
Receipt Customer payment received Debit Bank, Credit AR
JournalEntry A manual journal Whatever the user wrote, must balance
PayrollRun A Payroll period close Debit Wages Expense and Payroll Tax Expense, Credit Wages Payable, Credit each Tax Payable account
InventoryAdjustment A stock count or write-off Debit or Credit Inventory, opposite leg to Adjustment Expense or Income
BankTransfer Money moved between bank accounts Debit destination Bank, Credit source Bank

Tips

  • The Audit Trail is permanently read-only. You cannot edit or delete a row from this page. To correct an error, void the source document or post a reversing journal entry. CifraHQ writes the correction here automatically, leaving both the original and the reversal visible for the auditor.
  • Posting date and Timestamp are different on purpose. Sort by Timestamp when you want "in the order CifraHQ recorded them"; sort by Posting date when you want "in the order they hit the books". Backdated entries make these two orders different.
  • Click the GL Entry code to confirm balance. If you ever suspect a transaction did not balance (a corrupt import, a rare race), open the full journal entry view from the link. CifraHQ also rejects unbalanced postings at write time, so an unbalanced entry should never exist; the link is your verification.
  • Excel and PDF export respect your current filters. Set the filters first, then click export. This is how you produce focused audit packages quickly.
  • Save persistent column layouts in your browser. The Audit page remembers your column widths, sort, and visibility per user. Set it up once for the way you investigate, and it will stay that way next time you open it.

Related: Journal Entries · Bank Reconciliation · Chart of Accounts · Tax Payments · Form 430 (ITBMS) · Account Priming

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