podcast Audit Log Updates
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[00:00:00]
Introduction and Welcome
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Dan DeLong: Oh, welcome to another workshop Wednesday, where it's casual conversations for serious workflows brought to by school bookkeeping.com, where it's all about learning QuickBooks your way. And as that intro video was playing I was, stumbling over. Remembering an extra link that I [00:01:00] wanted to before we came.
Before we started, I wanted to share another link. And I was reminded by Blake talking about the earmark. That's what I wanted to, what I wanted to share was the.
CPE Credits and Earmark Channel
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Dan DeLong: The School of Bookkeeping Channel on earmark. We have quite a bit of previous workshops that are available for CPE Credit. You can always just pop over to the earmark channel and review any of the previous workshops that we had.
If you want if you need CPE credit. So we do have that channel there. It's woo. It's up there in the corner to do my Vanna White.
Rachel D: And a lot of people need CPE credit. I do.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Hi Rachel. How are you? It's good to have you guys.
Rachel D: I'm good. I'm good. How are you?
Dan DeLong: Fantastic.
QuickBooks Online Audit Log Overview
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Dan DeLong: So I was we this, topic [00:02:00] is very topical because Rachel and I were actually digging into the audit.
Log inside of QuickBooks online to try to find some breadcrumb trails of what actually happened. So I'm like, Hey, we, this should be a, we should update this because I was looking at the courses and lessons that we do have on school of bookkeeping and they stand to, to be updated. Yeah.
Rachel D: And, there's, it's so funny because it's like you don't really think about it until you need it, and then.
You then it's re you really wanna know
Rachel D (2): everything about the audit log and all the things that they've potentially changed.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And the audit log is one, this is one of those features that gets the nod for QuickBooks Online. Over QuickBooks Desktop because there is an audit trail in QuickBooks desktop and it's a report.
And, but it's really focused solely on. Transactional history, [00:03:00] right? So being able to see the prior state of a transaction in its current state, that's what the audit trail really allows you to do. And we'll talk about some of the things that the audit log does in QuickBooks Online, that the QuickBooks Audit log or audit Trail, I gotta keep them separate because they're called differently.
Different Desktop Audit Trail, QuickBooks Online. Audit log, because there's a lot more events and activities that are actually recorded in the audit log that that you find useful. So I wanted to start off by.
Practical Applications of the Audit Log
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Dan DeLong: By asking you, Rachel, what's, what are the practical applications for the audit log?
What what do you use it for in your practice?
Rachel D: I would probably say the first thing that comes to my mind is when there is a mistake, so that, that would probably [00:04:00] be the first. Relevant and immediate thing that I would say is when a mistake has been made and or brought to my attention, usually from a client, they'll say, oh, hey, I just went in and saw.
This, it looks weird. It looks different than what I thought, what happened, or I was expecting to see something and it's not there. I know it was there before what happened. The first thing that I'll do is because a lot of what we do is troubleshooting, right? So a lot of and the, so the first thing I'll do is I'll go in and I'll look for that.
There's a few places I'll look, but Audit Log is usually the first place that I'll look. The second thing that I'll say, and I'll, I'm just saying two things. The second thing that I is, rather than just looking for a mistake, is, when I need to look to see. Why there's a difference in a time [00:05:00] period.
And so in that situation, I'll start with the audit log and I'll hunt and see what happened. It's not necessarily a, I'm looking for one transaction to see what's missing. It's really oftentimes I'm either looking for a mistake or I'm looking. For a story. And in that situation, the audit log will help me piece it together.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. I always would explain it when people will call in when people will come and call in, call into Intuit or support. It's you're, almost like a police officer coming to an accident scene. Yeah. Section, as, especially as, things like cleanups and things like that you do inside of QuickBooks.
You, you're you, come to the, scene of the crime not, saying that people are embezzling or,
Rachel D: yeah.
Dan DeLong: Illegal. But you, come to this, [00:06:00] event. And you're, okay. How did that car get up in that tree?
Rachel D: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: How did how did it spin around you're trying to piece together, like how this actually took place in the audit log is one of those tools.
That allows you to get some clues, right? You're measuring the skid marks. You're doing same things that you can do forensically to to try to piece together.
Exploring the Audit Log Features
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Dan DeLong: And it's very useful to do that because of all of the things that that the audit log, contains but basically in a nutshell it's who did what when.
Yep. Yep. So if you're looking for to find out who did something, the audit log will tell you that if you're looking to find out. What happened? The audit log will tell you that, [00:07:00] and if you're looking to see when things happened, the audit log will tell you that.
Rachel D: Yeah. Although I do have an asterisk for the, yeah.
You find the who, you find the when, the what can be a little trickier because you, can see that this happened, but you don't necessarily know what, like you can see that something was changed, but you don't know from what. To what? And so that can be tricky sometimes. So I actually really love the audit log because I love forensic accounting.
I love investigating. I love figuring out what happened and putting something back together or recreating something. And you are really good at it. 'cause we've, done some searching and. The auto log along with some other stuff. Oh man. You're unstoppable. Yeah. I, just wanted to give a little caveat because there, there are ti the auto log isn't gonna tell you [00:08:00] everything.
Yeah. But like I said, it can help point you in the right direction and you can figure out what happened. It's not gonna tell you everything right, verbatim, but with your investigatory skills you can piece it together.
Dan DeLong: Lemme go ahead and share. I had, oops. Wait. Oh no. I have my.
Things backwards. Hold on a second. I had to move, I had to move my second monitor over the other side to make it look more natural as I'm looking at it. Oh, but it's, reversed. So my mouse is, I have to do it, I have to do it backwards on the mouse anyway. And you bring up a good point that this, segues nicely into.
The limitations of the, audit log of what you can't find, right. To your point current state, it's, it's, going to look at the current state of affairs, right? So Yep. If [00:09:00] you're trying to look at the, history of, of a transaction, right? So the biggest use case I think that people use the audit log for is troubleshooting the opening balance.
I. Of when they go to reconcile, right? Oh, I'm going to reconcile, and the opening balance is not what it was last month, what happened, right? I need to figure, find out who did what when. So I will turn to the audit log to, to do that because it's faced on the, based on the current state of affairs, right?
It's not going to pick up or be able to search for. Things that were in a prior state before, right? So when you're using it to troubleshoot the opening balance of a, bank or credit card account, and the result was it got edited to something else, [00:10:00] or moved or changed or modified, it's, the last instance of what it was.
But that's obviously not. What it is today. Finding that in the audit log is gonna be considerably challenging because it's not going to tell you what change, right?
Rachel D: Yeah. Like in the equation, you still have to solve for x it's, going give you maybe a, B and Y, but you still have to figure out and I'll give you an example.
We, this is something that we did the other week. We realized that. One of the prepaid accounts on the balance sheet was different. And we know that in the prior month the balance was this, and now all of a sudden the February balance was something else. And so turned out that we had, changed a product service item that was pointing to a prepaid to something else.
So it [00:11:00] threw that balance off, so we can see who changed it, when it was changed and when it was changed to. We just don't know what it was changed from, right? So you, get most of the variables, but you still have to have a brain and go figure it out and piece it together.
Dan DeLong: So I'm sharing this this, article, which we we've compiled and, have similar things and, resources in school bookkeeping as well. So if Intuit. Blocks or changes this article. We'll still have it for posterity. Here's here's some things that, what you'll learn about in the audit log, the date of any change to your books, the name of the user who made the change, the type of change that was, event that, or event the name of any customer or vendor related to the change and the original transaction [00:12:00] date and amount.
So a lot of information Yeah. Available there. And then oftentimes I've seen some posts on on Facebook or social media asking about these.
Understanding System Users in the Audit Log
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Dan DeLong: Users that aren't in their books, right? So you'll see some entries in the, audit log that you didn't do, right? So you wanna talk a little bit about these these extra ones, and you alluded to that when it's a change.
So online banking administration is a user that's created by QuickBooks, obviously for online banking. So when transactions are downloaded and or added by, a rule, the user that's associated to that will be. Mr. Or ms. Online Banking Administration, right? So if you ever see that that [00:13:00] user entered in there you can, you'll see that or that, that will be the name that would be associated with it.
Support representative is another one. Clearly that's when you're talking to Intuit they have the ability to to go into your account. Of course, they don't do that without your express permission. And they'll make some changes like oftentimes when you have. Payroll, corrections or something like that where they have to escalate the case and they make those changes on your behalf.
You'll see that user in the books. The, important thing is that every change that's ever, that is happened or happening in, in QuickBooks will be there, right? So it is a really good, breadcrumb trail of. Where to start, right?
Rachel D: Yes, definitely.
Dan DeLong: System [00:14:00] administration is. Like a, blanket user.
That's, for a lot of reasons. And it talks in here, if you made a change and the change affects another record for example, if you edited a payment and link it to a different invoice, you may see system administration event for a change to the original invoice. So that's not something that you edited, but you caused it.
Rachel D: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: By doing that action. But it needs to make an edit, and that edit needs to be recorded in the audit log. So you'll see the system administration doing that. This, second one, I wasn't, a hundred percent sold on this as, being the, total answer, but you connect a third party app to QuickBooks when the third party app sends data to QuickBooks or when it makes a change to your existing data.
This appears the system administration.
Rachel D: I've
Dan DeLong: seen it with, depending on the app and, I'm sure [00:15:00] that has something to do with the API and what app and how it's connected, but I've seen. The user who connects the app be listed in the audit log. When those events actually take place.
Oh,
Rachel D: that must be why I saw my name in a historical thing one time I was like, I was not in their books in 2021. That's there you go. Okay.
Rachel D (2): Okay. Okay.
Dan DeLong: So it's not always gonna be system administration, but it may see, you may see a, the user that Connected said app. As the person had done, it's I know I wasn't up at four in the morning.
Rachel D: Yeah. Okay. Doing
Dan DeLong: changes. But you may see it's gonna depend, right? So this is, it depends answer, but you should, you could see the user that connected it or system administration as those types of events. You create a recurring transaction such as a recurring expense when QuickBooks [00:16:00] automatically adds the instance of the transaction to your books.
A system administration event. Appears in your audit log. Again, that's something that the system is doing. You set up other events to happen automatically when you're not signed in. For example, a system administration event may appear when there's an update to your bank fees. Now I'll, I would expect that to be online banking administration, but yeah, you may see.
You may see a mixture of that. And then the last user is import administration. So this is an shows an automatic change related to the conversion of your data from QuickBooks Desktop.
Rachel D: Okay.
Dan DeLong: Those are the extra users that you'll see here.
Filtering and Exporting the Audit Log
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Dan DeLong: So let's pop over into my demo account here and we'll just kinda walk through some of the.
New and improved options here, but of, course covering the things that you probably could do [00:17:00] or realized already, right? So you can filter the audit log. This has come undergone quite a renaissance over the, latest last few months or so. But, and you can start to filter this and one of the, one of the things when I was working at Intuit was, kind of a downside of all this. Is it on it, it it didn't allow you to search for transactional dates. Only the date that it, that something changed, right? Because those are the events that are showing up in the audit log is when something changed. Now you can actually put in the transac search for the transactional date.
As well. So this is a, that's
Rachel D: really nice.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. It's a way to make a Venn diagram of honing in on exactly what it is that you're looking for. Because as you can see, [00:18:00] it's a pretty daunting log because of everything that's in there, right? So you have all these events and I just want to comb through some of these events, right?
Rachel D: So yeah, and I have gone through there like line by line. Sometimes it's bad.
Dan DeLong: So all events, of course, is the default filter for any. Anything that changed. So you're gonna see all of those things, right? So let's just comb through and define some of these these these events here.
So all transactions, so anything that has to do with a transaction itself you can filter and exclude everything, else, right? So if you're looking for, now, what you can't do is you can't search for specific transactions. So if you wanted to look for invoices that were, edited or modified well.
Sorry. You can't, budgets and forecasts really you can search for just events that have to deal with budgeting. [00:19:00] Forecasting is is, only available in QuickBooks Online advance, so you wouldn't see that as an event to choose from if you're not using advance data exchange. I'm not a hundred percent sure what that what that is, but I would assume it's a.
Data coming in or out of out of QuickBooks. This is really nice that the, deleted voided transactions event. So when something, when the event is deleting or voiding a transaction, 'cause a report is not going to help you with any of this if it's, if the transaction was deleted, but at least if you know it was deleted.
Then there's your, answer, right? Lists whoops. Lists is why don't I just click on 'em instead of just, lemme go back to data exchange. Do I have any? Oh, yeah, I do. Okay. Oh, whoops. I have [00:20:00] this is new. You can select multiples.
Rachel D: Yeah, you can select two at a time.
It looks like you don't have anything for data. I don't have
Dan DeLong: anything. Lemme just make sure I look for, the last seven. No, I have no data exchange in the last seven years in this demo company. Okay. So it doesn't tell us what it's, all so then, the lists this is anything that has to do with any list that you, that that's, in your QuickBook.
So if you don't know what they are, you can all go to the gear and go to all lists, and that will list all the lists. Oh, and to access the audit log, that's of course the gear. And then going to audit log here under the tools or use your favorite bookmark in write tool.
Rachel D: Oh, permission change.
I just, looked it up. So in QBO data exchange transactions generally refer to the [00:21:00] transactions that are created, modified or imported through integrations or apps. Through either, connected apps or QuickBooks. API
Dan DeLong: Got it. So any any app that you might have connected that pushed data to it?
Yeah. That'll, be listed there. Under that event permission changes, this is if you've gone in and changed, user and, created a user and or changed or edited their permission. This would give that as an event. There reconciliations. This is of course gonna be any time that you reconcile a financial account, will be listed there.
Recurring templates. That would be any recurring transaction event that you're wanting to look at. Revalued currency, if you're using multi multicurrency and you revalue [00:22:00] revalued the currency that will be listed there. Sales form customizations. So anytime that you modify the. The invoice or sales receipt template that'll be listed there.
Settings anytime you changed the preference. So this,
Rachel D: wow, this is really cool.
Dan DeLong: That is a great one to to filter for. Because especially when you have that who
Rachel D: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Why did it happen? Yeah. You changed your settings and
Rachel D: This is really helping you really. To filter out pretty, pretty much everything else and you can really hunt for what you need.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Signing in, signing out every time that you, as you can see that every time you sign in. Yeah. Or sign out that will be listed as an event. So if you see somebody in the burning the midnight oil when they shouldn't be. Maybe that's something to to look into.
Rachel D (2): Yep.
Dan DeLong: [00:23:00] Statements. Anytime that you create a customer statements time events, that is when you're entering in time activities, not just it's five o'clock.
Do you know where your children are? That's not the case. Sales order, this is something that we talked about. With Matthew on, with commerce and QB commerce there's now an option for sales orders. So if you're doing something specifically with with sales orders, you can look at those.
So this, is now getting into, the, next level of the audit log of being able to, choose specific types of transactions. And then we have projects and then. Manual elimination. That was probably that's probably, not a great thing to see in the audit law. But that, that, that's dealing with fixed assets.
So, when you [00:24:00] eliminate a, if it's fixed asset and you want to see that as a. Specifically as an event, you can filter for that. So a lot of things that you can filter for here in the audit log, because the most that you'll be able to see the is 500 events per page. And this gets into the, some of the other limitations here is what can you do with all this when you see it?
So if you were to export this. As I'm clicking on it and it's just spinning on me,
it does create a CSV, of the of the event or of the audit log. Oh. Which is over here. And I gotta go backwards with my mouse. There you are. It does create a CSV. But, oh, and this is actually the entire. The entire audit log [00:25:00] oh
Rachel D: wow.
Dan DeLong: That that was new, so this is good. So that was one of the feedbacks about this, is that when you do print the audit log, it only prints the page that you're looking at.
Which if you, a maximum you have is. 500 entries and there's 5,804 of them. If you do click on that export icon, which is this little icon here it does export the whole thing as a CSV, so you can then filter within Excel or search for those events to at least get the actual event that, that you're looking for.
It doesn't give you like the history here. So if, on the audit log, you have this view, right? So this has created a sales sales receipt. If I wanna go look at that. It will take you to [00:26:00] the the audit history of that transaction, which will give you, an, event for every time that transaction was, modified.
In this case, it's only once, right? You can only see you can see. Every, every breadcrumb trail will be listed here on the right side if you have more than one more than one edit. And it will also highlight the differences between the current state and the state before it. So that again gives you more, more insight as to who did what when.
Rachel D (2): Yeah.
Limitations and Right Tool Features
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Dan DeLong: Now, we noticed that there was a, an issue with the date changed filter that you cannot choose all dates, right? You can choose a custom date. [00:27:00] You can choose today. Yesterday, this several dynamic dropdowns, but there wasn't one for all dates.
Rachel D: Why do you think that?
Dan DeLong: I think it has to do with the the amount of data that's in there.
So the best we have is last seven years. Which I didn't realize was, an option when we were troubleshooting it together. So last seven years does give you quite a bit. Yeah. Which is in line with your, your IRS? Record keeping. Yep.
Should have the last seven years of information there. But you don't have this option for all dates, but the last seven years is pretty, pretty good, but it's not at the top, like all dates. This is one of those nuance things that are just maddening about QuickBooks Online. Is that the, the date?[00:28:00]
The calendars aren't consistent, right? So you have this calendar here, right? Which has this flip through, and then you have this calendar over here. Why do they not look the same on the same screen? Somebody is in control or managing this calendar that doesn't talk to the guy that handles this calendar.
Yeah. At least the calendar's there.
Rachel D: Yeah. The fact that they have date modified and transaction date is huge.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. The and that's the thing is that now you can use these two date filters to hone in on, on the, yeah. On the audit trail to see, okay, if this change was done and this, comes in really handy for reconciliation yeah.
Things right, because you reconcile on a certain day. [00:29:00] So if the opening balance is wrong, and or it was right the day that you reconciled and you can see that from your reconciliation report, you can run this audit log for changes. Since that day.
Rachel D (2): Yes. Yep.
Dan DeLong: And then look for transaction dates that were prior to the date of the last statement.
That just makes it allows you to hone in on the common usual suspects, right? Because. If it, matched, or if it, reconciled on what May 10th or March 10th, for example for February, then the change happened since March 10th. Yep. But the date range of the transactions, or are, could be ideally [00:30:00] it was, it would be from February.
28th. We're not in a leap here. Yeah. Prior to that, right? So you can get get really specific in as far as the transaction dates. And then you can also put, an amount, right? So if you're looking for a specific amount, you can put a, range of amount. Or if you're looking for one amount, you can put that in the front and the two, and then you'll get that here.
So those are the, is this No,
Rachel D: that's from right tool.
Dan DeLong: Yeah, the, this transaction date filter. Ah, that's not a QBO feature. Okay. That's the right tool, feature. Feature. So forget what I said. So everybody ignore that. So this transaction date filter is not, a QBO
Rachel D (2): thing. No.
Dan DeLong: So if you're looking for that, then I. [00:31:00] Download right tool.
Now
Rachel D: this is
Dan DeLong: a, this is a filter or this is an add-on that this is part of the free one, so you don't have to pay for,
Rachel D: oh, wait a second. Hold on, Time out. Are you saying the whole, the, all those 1, 2, 3, 4 transaction date, little windows. That's right. Tool. I thought just the red thing was right tool.
Dan DeLong: Let me look here. I'm gonna pop over into one that doesn't have, right tool and we'll see here. Alright, so this is another, I gotta go here, pop in.
Rachel D: Yeah, I feel like log in here. I feel like the, fact that it's different, I think the whole thing is right tool.
Dan DeLong: Yes, you're right. [00:32:00] So here's the right tool here. Here it is. Without right tool.
Rachel D: And that let's just be honest, that just makes the most sense that they would've developed like the most useful thing ever.
And added it into QBO. Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Yes. That transaction date. So we got really excited about that. Yeah. And then we realized it's not even our, it's not even part a
Rachel D: full extension.
Dan DeLong: And that's what it's hard to, it's hard to tell, right? Yeah. Because it just it is just sitting over top. Yeah,
Rachel D: I will say that is a confusing thing about Right tool sometimes is that, like you just said, it sits right on top and sometimes it's hard to tell what's right tool and what's not.
Dan DeLong: So I take back all the things that I said about the dates and the calendar because this is not. This is not something that Tool talks to QuickBooks about. Yeah. So, that's why those those calendars are different. [00:33:00] And why they look, differently because so without Right
Rachel D: tool, you don't have the ability to search by transaction data.
Yeah. Just by. The date that it was modified.
Dan DeLong: So these two things of the filter button here, as well as the jump to last click those are right tool functionalities that, that are part of the free one. So this is not something that you have to pay extra for or do anything like that.
Rachel D: Which I highly recommend anybody get the free version of?
Dan DeLong: Sorry. You're gonna have to look up Rachel if you wanna see over top of Matthew's,
Rachel D: But I highly, I know Dan does too. Rachel from Hector Garcia.
Dan DeLong: And
Rachel D: Mark, please get it. I have the paid version. I cannot live without it.
Dan DeLong: It is I think as Hector would say, it's making QuickBooks usable again.
And for just this [00:34:00] reason. Just you can then use this as a, functionality, even, better.
intro (2): Yep.
Dan DeLong: So that's that's really just it going through the the abilities or options that you have in there. Let's see here. I just wanna make sure my. My, my notes I, covered everything
Rachel D: and I'll say anything you wanna add about
Dan DeLong: the,
Rachel D: try it just try using it because that's the thing is I like your example of the starting balance being off.
I've been a reconciler for a very long time, so I can usually go in and find exactly where the issue is, but if you're not. That seasoned use that audit tool and look to see maybe what's happening because chances are something got deleted and or went back out to the bank feed or got unmatched, and so if you're using that audit, if [00:35:00] you're using that audit trail, it's really gonna help you see the bigger picture and all the things that you know might be going on. Because as we know, there's two sides to everything. One thing is usually always affecting something else. It like a domino effect sometimes.
And so going through that audit log is really helpful. Especially if you're just starting to use QuickBooks or maybe not as familiar with it and you, really wanna understand it in a more holistic way. Take that time and go through it because it can be really helpful.
Dan DeLong: Absolutely.
It is a, it's a great tool to again, understand who did what when and start to fill in the clues and as to how that car got up, got stuck in a tree, and, help you answer some of these mysteries [00:36:00] that you're looking to solve, especially when you get a call or a text or an email in a panic saying, yeah.
How did this happen? Especially when people start to want to point the fingers and how that happened.
Rachel D: Yeah, and especially if somebody's using product service items and they're pointing things to a lot of accounts, that's when things start to go wrong too, is if you're using very default basic accounts and you're not really going in and monkeying with that very often.
It's not the like of. Affecting prior periods, especially on the balance sheet, won't really happen. But if you're using a lot of accounts and a lot of them are tied to product service items. A lot can go wrong. So that audit trail is really helpful.
Dan DeLong: All right.
Conclusion and Upcoming Topics
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Dan DeLong: And keeping up with the updates. Next week we're gonna be talking about [00:37:00] updates to the QuickBooks Desktop migration which we'll make a user in, your audit log as we've determined.
Rachel D: But we'll talk
Dan DeLong: about some of the, S changes that have, taken place since the last time that we've demo demonstrated this. Look forward to seeing you next time on the workshop Wednesday, and we hope you all have a great day. [00:38:00]
