Business Central and Auditing Changes

Auditing changes in Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Business Central, like with any ERP, is fundamental to ensuring compliance.

In this blog, we’ll take a look at the differences between the 2 tools that you can use to audit changes in Business Central.   The first is native functionality, and the other is an app that you can add-on.  By the end, you’ll have a solid idea of how these options can help you audit changes in your ERP.

Let’s jump in!

Business Central Change Log

The Change Log functionality is built-in to Business Central.  It’ very simple to setup and get going in it.  Putting you’re controls in place quickly.

The Change Log can track changes when a value is inserted, modified or deleted from a field. It also provides a nice viewable log with the user id, date/timestamp, before and after values as well being exportable to excel.

The actual process is remarkably simple, and entails three main steps:

• Enable the feature
• Identify the tables that hold the data you want to track
• Select the fields to track

As with any system functionality, there are couple things you should keep in mind before “flipping the switch.”

The main thing is to keep in mind are that the Change Log can only track changes made within the BC user interface.  And the other is to aware of the amount of the data being stored.  The Change Log will continue to grow over time which will make it harder to search for relevant information.  As the log grows too, system performance could be negatively impacted.

The data can be purged by an admin as needed, but it’s always a best practice to know how the data will be stored, accessed, and later purged.

At the end of the day, if you have simple auditing needs with a handful of users to track, the BC change log is a great solution.

If you already have Business Central and want to hear more from Microsoft, you can find it here.

The Fastpath (FP) Audit Trail for Business Central

With a history of delivering audit trail visibility, Audit Trail from FastPath is available for a variety of ERPs.  If you’re moving from GP, you’ve probably seen Audit Trail as it’s been widely used with Microsoft Dynamics GP.

The main advantages of Audit Trail are:

• Outside of the ERP
  • The fact that this tool sits outside of ERP application and therefore doesn’t hinder performance can be a big deal for larger organizations.
• Easy to configure
  • It is easy to activate triggers on tables to track any field per user and on any company.
• Prebuilt auditing templates
  • Save time with pre-built auditor approved templates for triggers that identify critical fields and activities to track.

The FastPath Audit Trail also goes beyond the basic features of the Change Log and improves the capture method and reporting while providing electronic report sign-off capability.  In comparison, remember that the Change Log above is limited to reactionary audits and can slow down performance of the system at a certain point.

Wrapping it Up

In conclusion both are great tools that bring value to the organization to assist with Audit requests.

If you have simple needs and have few users to track, the BC change log is worthwhile to setup.

However if your company does have more advanced needs then we recommend getting FP Audit Trail. It’ll be a separate purchase to add on to your existing ERP but is generally considered a great investment. Fastpath also has an expert team to assist you with installation and provide support when needed.

Overall making use of either of these tools will put you at an advantage and on the good side of your auditing team.

Still not sure if Business Central Change Log or FastPath Audit Trail is the right solution for you?  Let us help.  We live and breath ERP’s, auditing, and compliance on a daily basis and are glad to help.