The audit trail you'll wish you had
The moment you need to know who changed what and when, it's too late to start recording it. Audit trails are insurance you buy in advance.
Sooner or later someone asks the question: who changed this, and when? A customer disputes a charge, a number looks wrong, a record was deleted. If you've been recording an audit trail, you have an answer in seconds. If you haven't, you have a shrug and a problem.
You can't reconstruct what you didn't record
Audit trails are unusual in that their value is entirely retrospective — you build them before you need them, for a moment you hope won't come. The trap is that the cost is upfront and visible while the benefit is future and uncertain, so it gets skipped. Then the moment comes.
Record the meaningful changes
You don't need to log everything — just the changes that matter: who altered key records, when, and ideally what the value was before. For anything touching money, access, or important customer data, an audit trail isn't bureaucracy. It's the difference between an answer and an embarrassing gap.
Nobody wants an audit trail until the day they desperately need one. By then it's too late to start.