Change history
See who changed what and when in a company file, filter the history, read the detail of a change and export it.
The History tab keeps track of every change made to a company file: creation, update, deletion, restore, revert. For each change, you see the author, the date, the device and the value before and after. It is the first place to look when a figure has moved without you knowing why.
The three sub-tabs
| Sub-tab | Content |
|---|---|
| History | The changes to the data of the company file, field by field. |
| Trash | The deleted items, which can be restored until they are purged. See Trash. |
| Activity | The feed of everything that happened: changes, sign-ins, exports, synchronisations. See Activity log. |
What is tracked
| Item | Tracking |
|---|---|
| Third parties, accounts, journals, VAT codes, analytic codes | Creation, update, deletion |
| Journal rules, bank rules, recurring entries | Creation, update, deletion |
| Entries | Creation and reversal. The lines are part of the snapshot of the entry. |
| Documents and bank transactions | Account allocation corrections, setting aside, booking |
| Fixed assets, budgets | Creation, update |
| Company file | Sheet and settings, tracked key by key |
| Fiscal years, periods, VAT returns | Status changes |
| Peppol registrations, integrations, document imports | Status changes |
The company settings are compared key by key. The history shows, for example, that the collection office number has changed, and not that "the settings" were modified.
Sensitive data stored encrypted, such as the configuration of an integration, never appears in the history. Only the fact that it was changed is recorded.
Reading a history line
Each line shows:
- the action: Created, Updated, Deleted, Restored, Reverted or Synced;
- the item concerned, with its type and its label;
- the author and the date;
- the origin: nothing in particular for an online entry, "Entered offline then synchronised", System for an automatic process, Novadesko bridge for a synchronisation;
- the version number of the item after the change.
Open a line to display the detail: each changed field with its old and its new value. For an entry, the account allocation lines are shown before and after.
For a change entered offline, the date displayed is the one on which the user actually made the entry on their device, and the name of the device is shown.
Filtering and searching
- Type a word in Search the history: a third-party name, a voucher number, a label.
- Refine with the filters:
- All users: limit to one team member;
- All types: limit to one type of item (third parties, entries, documents...);
- All actions: limit to one action;
- Period: limit to a date range. Clear period removes it.
- Browse the results. Load more displays the older changes.
If no change matches, the screen displays "No change recorded for these criteria".
The history of a single item
You do not need to go through the History tab to know the life of a record. From a third party, an entry, a document, an account, a bank transaction, a fixed asset, a journal, a recurring entry or a VAT return, the History shortcut directly opens the list of changes of that item, under the title "History of …".
Faced with an unexpected third-party balance, open the history of the sheet and then that of the latest entries: within a few seconds you will know whether a colleague reversed a voucher or whether a synchronisation brought in a new document.
Grouped operations
A user action can lead to several changes. Booking a document, for example, creates an entry and changes the status of the document. These changes share the same operation identifier. The history presents them together and lets you revert them in one go with Revert the whole operation. See Revert.
Exporting the history
- Apply the filters you want.
- Click Export CSV.
The file contains the filtered lines, in CSV format with a semicolon separator, encoded in UTF-8 so that it opens directly in Excel.
Retention period
The change history is not purged automatically: it accompanies the company file throughout its lifetime. Only the trash has a retention period, which can be set per company file.
Limits to be aware of
A few bulk operations do not leave one line per item in the history:
- the lettering and unlettering of third-party items;
- the locking of all periods at closing;
- the return of documents and transactions to "to be booked" after a reversal;
- the initial loading of the chart of accounts when the company file is created.
These operations are still recorded globally in the activity log (who closed the fiscal year, and when), but not record by record.
The history is an internal traceability tool. It does not replace the exportable audit trail, which is part of the books of the company file and is included in the complete accounting file.