The Clear Audit Trail option can be used to remove transactions from your customer, supplier, nominal and bank activities and this in turn can enhance the performance of your software. Although optional, the audit trail is most often cleared immediately after running a year end.
This session has now taken place but you can catch up with a recording:
Open the webinar recordings article
Slides for this session:
Clearing your Audit Trail - print friendly.pdf
Top questions and answers from recent live Q & A
| Question | Answer | Article link |
| HMRC recommend keeping records for 7 years - once the audit trail is cleared, is there a way to look at the transactions that were cleared | I would recommend taking an archive of the data prior to running the Clear Audit trail. this would help with compliance for VAT | Open Archive your company data |
| Does having a large number of transactions slow the system? | It can do, but other factors could be impacting the speed of the system, i.e. PC spec, network speed etc. If you do have a large number of transactions and are encountering speed issues, clearing your audit trail would certainly be an option you woukd be advised to try. | Open the Clear Audit Trail article |
| How many transactions can Sage 50 cloud hold without cleardown? | There isn't a specific answer to this as it depend on your computer memory and other environmental factors but there are some guidelines in this article. | Open the 'What is data management?' article |
| Our audit trail hasn't been cleared since y/end 2013 is it ok to do this now during our mid year? | You can do this at any point you dont need to wait till year end just pick a time that suits. | Open the Clear Audit Trail article |
| Once you've cleared a load of transactions, how does it look in a customers activity (i.e. can you view what products they had historically) or is it simply gone? | For all transactions removed it will post an opening balance so if it clears 10 transactions from a nominal code it would post a single opening balance with the Clear Audit Trail date. | Open How do I view transactions that were removed by Clear Audit Trail |
| Can you restore data to see transactions cleared? | My recommendation would be to take an archive of the data before running the Clear Audit Trail. | Open Archive your company data |
| If transactions don't meet the criteria do they just stay visible? | Yes they will just remain in your transactions list and within the activity of customers/suppliers/nominal records. | N/A |
| We don't use the vat reconciliation as we are partially exempt, can we still clear the audit trail? | You can run a dummy return which would involve running a reconcilation and not submitting the data to HMRC. Once flagged as reconciled you can then run Clear Audit Trail. | N/A |