How to View the Audit Trail of a Rental Contract

The audit trail on a rental contract is a dated record of who changed what, so you can explain how a contract ended up the way it is without having to ask around.

Overview

Rental contracts rarely sit still. Dates get extended, equipment gets swapped, someone off hires a line, someone else raises the invoice. Latner records those changes as they happen and keeps them on the contract itself, in a panel called Audit History.

Every rental contract keeps its own audit trail, covering both the contract and its detail lines.
Each entry names what happened, who did it, and the date and time it happened.
Updates list every field that changed, with its old and new value side by side.
Changes made together as part of one action are grouped into a single entry.
Entries are added automatically. Nothing in Latner lets you write, edit or delete one, so the trail stays trustworthy.

Before You Begin

You need one permission and a saved rental contract.

Requirement	Where to Find It
Audit Log permission	Security › Configuration › Permission Groups, open the group, then Modules › Security › Screen
A saved rental contract	Rental › Rental Contracts

The Audit Log permission sits under Security › Screen in each permission group, and controls the audit trail on every record type, not just rental contracts

No settings need to be switched on. Auditing runs all the time in the background; the Audit Log permission only decides who is allowed to read it.

Viewing the Audit Trail

Step 1 - Open the rental contract

Go to Rental › Rental Contracts and open the contract you want to look into. The audit trail lives on the contract's details page and follows the contract for its whole life, so it's still there once the contract is completed or cancelled.

The rental contract details page - the audit trail is available at every status, including Completed and Cancelled contracts

Step 2 - Open the Audit History

Click the magnifying glass icon at the right-hand end of the status strip, level with Contract Status and Branch. The Audit History panel slides in from the right.

The audit icon sits at the far right of the status strip, next to Branch - if it isn't there, you don't have the Audit Log permission

Step 3 - Read the timeline

Entries are listed newest first, ten at a time. Each one is a card on a timeline, and each card tells you three things:

What happened - the heading, for example "RC19 was invoiced" or "Line 2 - Equipment was Updated".
What changed - a table of the fields affected, if the action changed any.
Who and when - the user who was signed in at the time, and the date and time, at the bottom of the card.

If the contract has no recorded activity yet, the panel simply reads No Audit History.

The Audit History panel - actions such as credited and returned carry no field changes, so those entries show only the heading, the user and the time

Step 4 - Check what changed

Where an action changed field values, the card lists them under Field, Old and New. Entries for a record being created show Field and Value instead, since there is no earlier value to compare against.

An invoice entry that also pushed the expected off hire date out - the old and new values are shown side by side

One action often touches several records at once. Extending the expected off hire date on the contract, for example, extends the equipment lines with it. Latner groups those changes into a single entry, with the contract's change first and each affected line beneath it, so you can see the full effect of one action instead of three unrelated entries.

One date change on RC7, grouped with the two equipment lines it flowed through to - all recorded under a single user and time

Step 6 - Load older activity

Scroll to the bottom of the panel and click Show More to load the next ten entries. Keep clicking until the button disappears, which means you've reached the beginning of the contract's history. To close the panel, click the X in its top corner or click anywhere outside it.

Show More at the foot of the panel - it disappears once the oldest entry has been loaded

What Gets Recorded

The audit trail covers the rental contract and its detail lines, and recognises the actions you run from the contract, not just plain edits. Entries you'll see include:

Created, Updated and Deleted - for the contract, its lines and their rates.
Equipment was manually put On Hire and On Hire was reversed.
off hired, returned and equipment on rent changed.
invoiced and credited.
completed, reopened, postponed and cancelled.
sent, emailed, duplicated and E-Signature Requested.
Branch was Updated, Customer was Updated and Rental Rate Adjustment Added.
Discount Requested and Discount Request Resolved.

An entry is only written when something actually changes. Opening a contract, or saving it again with the same values, leaves no trace - which is why the trail stays readable on contracts that have been open for months.

FAQs

The magnifying glass icon isn't on my rental contract. Why?

The icon only appears for users whose permission group has the Audit Log permission switched on, under Security › Screen. Ask your Latner administrator to enable it for your group. It also won't appear until the contract has finished loading, so give the page a moment first.

Why do the dates inside the change table look different from the date on the entry?

They're two different things. The date and time at the bottom of the card is when the change was made, converted to your own time zone. Date values inside the Old and New columns are shown exactly as they are stored, in UTC, and are labelled that way - for example 31/12/2026, 12:32:52 UTC.

I know something changed, but there's no entry for it. Where is it?

Two common reasons. Either the save didn't change any values, in which case nothing is recorded, or the change was made on a related record rather than on the contract. Customers, sites, equipment, work orders and rental quotes each keep their own audit trail - open that record and use the same icon there.

Does the audit trail include changes to individual lines?

Yes. Entries headed "Line 1 - Equipment", "Line 2.1 - Transport" and the like are changes to the contract's detail lines, and they're listed alongside the contract's own entries. Rate changes on a line are recorded too.

Can an entry be edited or removed?

No. The Audit History panel is read-only - there's no way to add, change or delete an entry from it, which is what makes it useful when you need to prove what happened.

Can I open the audit trail on my phone?

The Audit History panel is built for the desktop app and doesn't open on phone-sized screens. Use a tablet or a computer when you need to review a contract's history.

Watch the Demo

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