Will my Sage 50 audit trail convert to QuickBooks?
No. The Sage 50 audit trail stays behind in a conversion; QuickBooks starts its own audit log from the day you begin in the new file.
No. The Sage 50 audit trail does not convert. It stays inside the Sage company data, and there is no conversion path that carries it into a QuickBooks file. QuickBooks builds its own audit history instead, starting on the first day you work in the converted company.
The audit trail is a log, not bookkeeping data
A conversion moves the substance of your books: names, accounts, items, and the transactions behind your balances. The audit trail is different in kind. It is a record of edits, a running history of who changed which entry and when, held inside the Sage data. QuickBooks has no structure to receive that history, so a conversion has nothing to map it onto.
Exactly which records and how much history carry over depends on the file and the setup. The change log behind those records never does.
Does QuickBooks record history of its own?
Yes. QuickBooks Desktop keeps an Audit Trail report, and QuickBooks Online keeps an Audit Log. Both begin recording with the new company file. Every change made in QuickBooks after the conversion, including edits to converted transactions, is captured with the user and the date.
The new log knows nothing about the years spent in Sage. From the day of the switch forward, though, your changes are tracked continuously.
Where the old history should live
Keep it in Sage, and keep it openable. Three habits protect it:
- Before converting, export or print the audit trail report for the periods you might ever be asked about, and store those copies with your year-end files.
- Keep the Sage company data plus at least one backup on separate media.
- Keep a working way to open it. Software that only runs on an old machine can strand the data, so hold onto the installed program or the install media alongside the backups.
If a tax authority or an auditor later asks about the change history, the Sage file and those printed exports are your answer. An archive you can no longer open is not an archive.
Decide what you need before the conversion date
Most businesses rarely need the old log. A clean Sage 50 to QuickBooks conversion plus a kept archive covers almost every question that comes up later. Settle the rare cases now, because after the switch the archive is the only source. Send us the file for a free evaluation, and our engineers will tell you what it holds, and what the conversion will include, before anything moves.