Field notes · 19 January 2026

A screenshot of the workflow is not an audit trail

Configuration pictures show how the process is supposed to look. Sampled documents show how it ran.

Laptop and notebook on a wooden table

Vendors and project teams like to walk auditors through a demo company. The screens are clean. The roles are textbook. Nothing in that tour proves a live purchase request followed the same path last month.

A usable trail pack names the document, the user, the timestamp, and the next status. If the application cannot produce that sequence without a consultant reconstructing it by hand, the control is weaker than the demo implied.

We still take screenshots—but we attach them to sampled transactions. The picture then illustrates evidence, instead of standing in for it.