Audit Hero

Can I retrieve a deleted invoice in QuickBooks?

Can I retrieve a deleted invoice in QuickBooks?

Yes.

Many enterprise-level software suites like NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics try to convince potential customers that QuickBooks does not have an audit trail. This is incorrect. QuickBooks does have an audit trail and you cannot turn it off! If you have inadvertently deleted in invoice in QuickBooks, don’t worry – the information is saved and you can retrieve it!

QuickBooks Enterprise makes it easy for you to retrieve any and all significant information from deleted invoices.

RunAuditTrailRepor

To access a deleted invoice:

  1. Run the Voided/Deleted Transactions Report by selecting “Reports” and then “Accountant“.
  2. From here, you should be able to see the detail of the invoice in question.
  3. You can add columns for more information on this report as well.
  4. You cannot  restore the deleted invoice. You can print out or save the transaction report so that you have the information to re-enter as a new invoice.

How to access the QuickBooks Audit Trail

In the same section of QuickBooks there is also the Audit Trail Report.

quickbooks-audit-trail
Visual of the QuickBooks Audit Trail Feature

This report can be filtered by number or date in order to find the transaction we are looking to recreate. The audit trail gives you two date ranges – the first is for the “transaction date”. The second is the “modified date”. This allows you some flexibility in how to best find the transaction, if you know when it was created, or when it was changed.

Why You Might Need to Access the QuickBooks Audit Trail

Here is a real world example of a client who benefitted from the QuickBooks Audit Trail.

This Fourlane client is a distributor and maintenance company. They had a glaring balance change in an asset account and had no idea where it came from, or when it had started. Their leadership worried that someone was messing with their books, or they had a potential bug in their system.

They went back and compared balances for 6 months to see where the difference originated, and then reached out for our help. We hopped on a quick LogMeInRescue session so I could look with them. In about 30 seconds we ran the QuickBooks Audit Trail Report for all changes that effected the prior year (meaning the transaction was dated in the prior year) that had been changed in the last week (meaning the date the transaction was created).

It was January so one of the people on the accounting staff had accidentally dated a transaction to January 12th, 2017 instead of 2018. I made sure to show them the closing date as well. We switched the transaction date to the correct year and corrected their balances. In situations like this the QuickBooks Audit Trail is often the easiest way to see who, when, where (and sometimes why) a particular transaction was changed, and rectify it quickly!

If you need assistance accessing your QuickBooks Audit Trail or need an experienced third party to help you with your QuickBooks instance, Fourlane can help!

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