The audit trail and chain verification
The event log, the cryptographic chain that makes tampering detectable, external timestamp anchors, and how to produce an evidence bundle for an auditor.
ReferenceFor Firm staff, Bookkeepers, Business owners
The event log
Every change to a record is written to the event log with a timestamp, the actor who made it, the record affected, and the before and after values. The Δ column shows how many fields changed, so a routine edit and a wholesale rewrite look different at a glance.
Actors include people, integrations acting under an API key, and automation. Machine activity is attributed as specifically as human activity — there is no anonymous "system" bucket that changes cannot be traced through.
Chain integrity
Journal entries are linked by cryptographic hash: each entry's hash incorporates the one before it. Altering a historical entry would change its hash and break every link after it.
The chain verifier walks every entry for the entities in scope and reports per entity whether the chain is intact. It is the fastest way to answer an auditor asking whether the ledger has been rewritten — and, unlike a policy statement, it is checkable.
Chain verification, external anchors, and the event log on one screen.
- 1Chain integrity verifier
- 2External anchors — stamped chain heads
- 3Event log
External anchors
Verifying the chain proves internal consistency. It does not, by itself, prove that the whole chain was not rebuilt at some later date. External anchoring closes that gap.
A scheduled job stamps each legal entity's chain head to OpenTimestamps every Sunday at 06:00 UTC. The anchor records the sequence number, the head hash, and a status that moves from pending to confirmed as the timestamp is committed. The result is independent evidence of what your ledger contained at a point in time — evidence that does not require anyone to trust myBBS.
Working with an auditor
The audit screen gathers what an auditor typically asks for:
- Chain verification results per entity, as evidence the ledger is intact.
- External anchors, as independent evidence of what existed when.
- The event log, showing who changed what and when.
- Drift and diff views, comparing states across time.
- An export bundle packaging the evidence for delivery.
Common questions
No. The audit log is append-only, at every permission level. An audit trail that privileged users could edit would prove nothing.
Treat it as a serious incident. Note the entity and the sequence number reported, stop posting to that entity, and contact support immediately. Do not attempt to repair it yourself.
The ledger and its audit trail are retained for the life of the account. Deleting history would defeat both the chain and the reason for keeping books.
See alsoSecurity, access, and your data
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