Nothing to verify was disabled
Because the audit trail can't be disabled by anyone, there's no annual project confirming it stayed on all year — it was structurally never possible to have turned it off.
Coming soonBookkeeping Preparation Assistant
Keep a tamper-proof change log
Every edit to the books is permanently recorded with who changed what and when, satisfying the statutory requirement companies already face.
Works with
What it does
How Khata handles this
Khata logs every creation, edit, and deletion touching the ledger as an append-only entry capturing the user, timestamp, old value, and new value, and this log cannot be turned off or edited by anyone, including an admin. The CA (and, for companies, the statutory auditor) can pull the full edit-log history for any period on demand.
A finance intermediary's CA, ahead of a statutory audit, needs to confirm the company's accounting software actually had its audit trail feature switched on continuously through the whole year — not toggled off during a busy quarter and back on before anyone checked closely. Getting that confirmation from IT logs kept separately from the accounting system itself is its own small, tedious project every year.
Khata removes that project by making the audit trail a feature nobody can turn off in the first place. Every creation, edit, and deletion touching the ledger is logged as an append-only entry capturing who changed what and when, and this log cannot be disabled or edited by anyone, including an admin. The CA, and where relevant the statutory auditor, can pull the full edit-log history for any period on demand, because there was never a way to have switched it off at all.
Where keep a tamper-proof change log happens
Khata runs this directly on the platforms your customers already use — no separate app for them to install.
- QuickBooks
- Xero
- Google Sheets
- Zoho
How it works
Step by step
- 01
Every mutating action gets logged
Any creation, edit, or deletion touching the ledger, an invoice, or a categorisation fires a synchronous log entry the moment it happens, capturing the user, the exact timestamp, and both the old and new value.
- 02
The log is append-only by design
Entries are written once and never altered afterward — there is no edit or delete action available for the log itself, to any user regardless of role, including an account administrator holding otherwise full access to everything else.
- 03
Retention runs eight years minimum
The retention enforcer keeps every log entry for at least eight years in line with the statutory minimum books-of-account retention period set by law, and never auto-deletes a single entry before that eight-year window has genuinely passed.
- 04
CA pulls history on demand
The CA or statutory auditor can retrieve the complete edit-log history for any date range directly from Khata, rather than requesting separate IT logs from elsewhere to confirm the trail was continuously active all year.
Why it matters
What you get out of it
Every change is fully traceable
An edit-log entry captures the user, the timestamp, and the exact old and new value, giving a complete, specific answer to how a figure changed and who changed it.
One place for the history
The CA retrieves a period's full audit trail directly from Khata on demand, rather than piecing it together from separate IT or system logs kept elsewhere.
The detail
What to know before you rely on it
This capability exists because the requirement it satisfies isn't optional for many businesses — an accounting software's audit trail feature, and its continuous operation, is something a statutory auditor must confirm under the applicable MCA rule. Khata's answer to that requirement is structural rather than procedural: instead of a setting an admin could toggle off during a hectic month and quietly back on later, there is no toggle at all. The feature is always active, for every user, on every mutating write.
The append-only property is the whole point, and it's treated as the single highest-risk surface in the product because a single failure here undermines the statutory guarantee entirely, which is why the write path is kept deliberately simple and isolated from every other feature touching the ledger. Every mutating capability — categorisation, reconciliation, a locked-period exception — routes through this same logging path without exception, because a log with one carve-out is not the log the rule asks for.
Retention is set at a minimum of eight years, matching the statutory books-of-account retention period, and the enforcer never auto-deletes before that window has passed, even as storage grows over years of continuous logging. For a business owner, what this means in practice is simple: nobody, including the owner themselves, has a way to quietly undo or hide a change once it's been made. For the CA, it means the question "was the trail active all year" has one direct answer, pulled from one place, instead of a reconciliation exercise across systems.
Industry use cases
Where this earns its keep
13 industries where Khata applies this directly.
Khata organizes spare-parts purchase bills and service-invoice GST data into a return-ready summary, so a dealer or garage owner's CA can file GSTR-1/3B without re-keying from paper bills.
A car service center owner photographs a stack of spare-parts supplier invoices at month-end, Khata extracts the HSN codes and tax amounts from each, and the owner's CA opens the shared workspace to review the compiled purchase summary before filing.
See the automotive playbookKhata prepares TDS worksheets on vendor and contractor payments alongside the GST purchase-matching report, so a distributor's CA has both compliance threads ready in one place each month.
A wholesale distributor pays several transport contractors during the month, and Khata flags which payments likely crossed the TDS threshold for Section 194C, compiling a worksheet the CA reviews before determining the actual deduction and filing.
See the b2b sales playbookKhata maintains an immutable, audit-trail-backed ledger and draft financial statements for a small NBFC or finance intermediary, giving their CA and statutory auditor a clean starting point that already satisfies the mandatory edit-log requirement.
A small lending intermediary's CA needs to confirm the edit-log audit trail has been continuously active all year before signing the Rule 11(g) audit trail reporting requirement, and pulls the full log directly from Khata's audit trail view rather than requesting IT logs separately.
See the banking and finance playbookKhata tracks product inventory purchases and retail sales together so a salon-and-retail combo business has a correct closing stock valuation feeding into its draft P&L.
A beauty product retailer sells both services and boxed skincare products, and Khata separates the two revenue streams in the ledger while calculating a consistent closing valuation for the unsold stock ahead of the CA's year-end review.
See the beauty and cosmetics playbookKhata organizes subscription and course-fee receipts alongside vendor payments to instructors, preparing a clean revenue and expense summary for a CA to review each quarter.
An online tutoring business receives course-fee payments through multiple gateways during the month, and Khata reconciles each gateway payout against recorded receivables so the CA sees one consolidated income summary instead of three separate statements.
See the education playbookKhata captures client invoices and business expenses in one simple ledger so an independent consultant has GST and income records organized without hiring a full-time bookkeeper.
A freelance designer invoices three clients in a month and photographs a handful of software-subscription receipts, and Khata compiles both sides into a period summary the freelancer forwards to their CA before the quarterly GST filing.
See the freelancers and consultants playbookKhata reconciles patient-billing receipts and supplier purchases (medical supplies, equipment) into a clean ledger, respecting that patient PII in billing records needs the same access control as any other financial document.
A physiotherapy clinic owner uploads a batch of supplier invoices for consumables, and Khata extracts amounts and HSN codes while keeping patient names on any attached billing documents restricted to the clinic's own staff and CA, not broadly visible in reports.
See the health and wellness playbookKhata handles multi-branch stock valuation and e-way bill data preparation for a home-decor retailer shipping larger items across state lines.
A furniture retailer with showrooms in two states ships a large order that crosses the e-way bill value threshold, and Khata pre-fills the consignment and HSN details from the invoice so the dispatch team only needs to generate the bill itself on the government portal.
See the home decor and furnishing playbookKhata prepares TDS worksheets for payments to freelance creators and vendors, and organizes retainer-invoice records, for an agency's CA to finalize each month.
A marketing agency pays several freelance video editors as contractors during a campaign, and Khata's TDS worksheet flags the professional-fee payments likely requiring deduction under Section 194J for the CA's review before the agency deducts and deposits tax.
See the marketing agencies playbookKhata consolidates multi-GSTIN books across a real-estate firm's project entities while keeping each project's return-ready summary properly separated for its own filing.
A real-estate broker running two project-specific entities under separate GSTINs views a consolidated cash-position dashboard for planning, while their CA still receives two entirely separate GST summaries, one per GSTIN, for filing.
See the real estate playbookKhata values daily-changing food and beverage stock for the books and reconciles POS settlement receipts against the bank statement each day.
A restaurant owner's UPI and card settlements land in the bank account a day after the sale, and Khata's reconciliation queue matches each day's POS batch total against the corresponding bank credit, flagging any settlement that hasn't landed within the expected window.
See the restaurants and food playbookKhata tracks retail product inventory alongside service revenue and prepares a combined GST summary reflecting both goods and services HSN/SAC codes.
A spa sells packaged skincare products in addition to treatments, and Khata applies the correct HSN code to product line items and the correct SAC code to service line items on the same invoice, keeping the tax split accurate for the CA's review.
See the spas and salons playbookKhata organizes multi-vendor purchase bills (transport, accommodation, package suppliers) and prepares the GSTR-2A/2B purchase-matching report so a travel agent's ITC claims are backed by verified supplier filings.
A travel agency books hotel and transport packages from several vendors for a client tour, and Khata's purchase-matching report shows which of those vendor invoices are already reflected in GSTR-2B, letting the CA hold back ITC claims on the ones that aren't yet visible.
See the travel and tourism playbookMore from Khata
Everything else it handles
Capture receipts by photo or email
A business owner stops losing paper receipts because every bill is captured the moment it's created, from a phone camera, a forwarded email, or a bulk upload.
Learn moreExtract line items from documents
The owner no longer types out every item, date, vendor, and amount from a receipt by hand — Khata reads it and fills the fields.
Learn moreDraft gst-ready sales invoices
The business creates invoices that already carry the correct GSTIN, HSN/SAC code, and tax split so nothing needs re-keying at return time.
Learn moreMaintain the day-to-day ledger
Every sale, purchase, payment, and receipt lands in a proper double-entry ledger instead of a loose spreadsheet or paper khata.
Learn moreAuto-sort expenses into categories
Expenses land in the right category (rent, salaries, supplies, utilities) automatically instead of the owner deciding from scratch every time.
Learn moreMatch bank transactions to books
The owner can see at a glance which bank transactions already match a recorded invoice or expense, and which ones still need attention.
Learn moreQuestions
Straight answers.
Can I turn off the audit trail if I don't want every change logged?
No — there is no setting, for any user including an account admin, that disables or edits the audit trail in any way. It is a structural feature of every capability that touches the books, not an optional toggle, which is precisely what lets it satisfy the statutory continuous-operation requirement your CA or auditor may need to confirm each year.
What exactly does a single audit trail entry record?
Each individual entry captures who made the change, precisely when they made it, and the exact old and new value for whatever was edited, created, or deleted at that moment. It's written once, as an append-only record, and nobody can subsequently alter or remove that entry afterward, regardless of their role, seniority, or permissions anywhere else in the account itself, no exceptions made.
How long is the audit trail kept, and can I delete old entries to save space?
Every logged entry is retained for a minimum of eight full years, in line with the statutory minimum period set for retaining books of account and related records under MCA Rule 3(1), and the retention enforcer never auto-deletes entries before that window has passed, no matter how much storage accumulates over that entire eight-year retention period as it runs on.
Does my CA or auditor need to request logs separately from Khata's support team?
No — the CA, and a statutory auditor where one has been separately engaged for the year, can pull the complete edit-log history for any period directly from within Khata on demand, which is exactly what removes the yearly project of assembling separate IT logs just to confirm the trail stayed continuously active throughout the entire financial year, without any gaps.
The rest of your stack
It plugs into what you already run.
Khata connects to your tools
No rip-and-replace — keep a tamper-proof change log works alongside the systems already running your business.
- Razorpay
- Stripe
- Paytm
- PhonePe
- Adobe Acrobat Reader
- Google Drive
- Dropbox
- Shopify
- Amazon
Coming soon