Audit trail

The chronological record of everything that happened to an agreement, from upload to completion.

An audit trail is the ordered record of every action taken on a document: who uploaded it, who was invited, who opened it, how each person was identified, what they filled in, what they decided, and when.

Two properties make it evidence rather than logging.

It is append-only. Corrections are new entries; existing entries are never edited or deleted. A trail the vendor can rewrite proves nothing.

It is tamper-evident. Each entry carries a hash that covers the entry before it, so removing or altering any entry breaks the chain from that point on. Without this, append-only is a claim about the software rather than a checkable property of the data.

A trail that records only successes is materially weaker than one that records failures too. A refused identity check is exactly what somebody investigating a disputed signature is looking for.

Last reviewed 2026-09-18. Pactlyra produces a detailed evidence record for every completed document. Electronic signature validity depends on your jurisdiction, the document type, and how the transaction is carried out; nothing here is legal advice.