The week before external fieldwork is late for rebuilding a year of missing logs — but it is not too late to organise what you have and document what you do not.
Checklist
- Export journal histories for the audit period from each in-scope ledger; store hashed copies so you can prove the extract date.
- List known overrides above your materiality threshold with a one-line business reason each.
- Confirm user-access reports for posting roles cover the full period, including leavers.
- Note any system outages or cutovers that created trail gaps; write the dates plainly.
- Name the person who will sit with auditors on trail questions — and brief them on the gaps.
What not to do
Do not backfill approvals in the system to “clean” the trail. Auditors notice inconsistencies between extracts taken on different days. Honesty about a gap, with a compensating control description, travels further than a suddenly perfect log.
If the period still looks thin
A short pre-audit trail preparation sprint can surface the weakest spots in five to ten days. It will not invent missing history, but it will stop you discovering holes in front of the audit partner.