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Clear audit trail

Clearing the audit trail can help improve the speed of your software. Over the years you may enter thousands of transactions in Sage Accounts. The more transactions you enter the larger your data files become which can lead to a slower performance when you are processing or running reports.

If you clear the audit trail you'll have less transactions and therefore less data for the software to manage which helps improve performance.

Clear audit trail removes transactions that meet a specific criteria from the nominal activities. It posts an opening balance journal on the nominal codes, that represents the balance of the removed transactions. It also creates an audit trail history which holds the details of the removed transactions.

We recommend you keep at least two years worth of data and take a backup before you run the clear audit trail. Find out more

Criteria for clearing transactions

Only transactions that meet the following criteria will be removed:

• They must dated before the current financial year.
• They must be fully paid or allocated.
  
• Bank transactions must be bank reconciled.
• Transactions with a tax code which is included on the VAT Return must be VAT reconciled.

If a transaction does not meet all of the above criteria, it is not removed.

All transactions that are linked together must meet all of the above criteria before they are removed. For example, if you have a sales invoice and it is linked to a sales receipt and sales credit, the sales receipt and sales credit must meet all of the criteria for the sales invoice to be removed.

To clear the audit trail

1. Tools > Period End > Clear Audit Trail.

2. Enter the date you want to clear transactions up to > Clear audit trail.
3. Complete the Backup window as required > OK. Find out more
4. If transactions are removed and you want to see them, select I would like to view details of the removed transactions > OK.
5. Close the report > Close.