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How to use a Change log report
How to use a Change log report
Updated this week

Overview

Change log reports allows companies to download a list of changes to employee, employment, banking, compensation, social and diversity categories.

The downloaded report is formatted a little differently to other reports, each row describes a field that has been changed and whose information has been changed, when the change occurred and when that change comes into effect (great for categories such as compensations).

As with other reports, the format is CSV, which can be imported into your spreadsheet app of choice.

Because this report is based on audit log data, these changes can only go back a certain amount of time, we highlight this if relevant to the report being created.


Creating a one-off report

Change log reports can be created like any other report. You can select the Change log report from our templates, or Change logs can be selected from the “Report type” dropdown when building a custom report type.


Identifier fields

Identifier fields are a new addition for Change log, each row in the report will include these values and they describe the user who’s information has been changed.

For example, if John Smith changes the dietary preferences of Jane Doe, Jane Doe’s identifier fields will be shown in the report.

The data field options are limited to the information recorded in the audit log, this means that some information may not be reported, we highlight these cases in the report modal, but only when relevant.

Reports are returned to the user in CSV format, which can be imported into your spreadsheet editor of choice.


Change log report columns

The columns before the “Field” column are the identifier fields and relate to the person whose information has changed.

  • The Field column describes which field was changed

  • Next value and Old value describe the changed values

  • Change date describes the day the change was made, and the file is sorted by the timed version of this value.

  • Effective date describes when this change comes/came into effect, for most fields this is the same as the “Change date”, but for areas such as compensation and job roles this is the date the relevant item came into effect.


Understanding Change, End and Effective dates

For example, I create a new salary for an employee on May 3, 2024 that comes into effect on June 26, 2024, the effective date shown will be “26/06/2024”.

End date is similar to “Effective date” but refers to the date the relevant item stops being effective.

I update the note of the replaced salary for an employee on May 3, 2024 that stopped being effective on June 25, 2024, the end date shown will be “25/06/2024”


Permissions

As with other reports, the data returned to the customer is scrubbed to remove any information they do not have access to.

Rows that refer to information a customer does not have access to are removed and identifier fields are left empty.


Other considerations

  • Report downloads take longer the more data that needs to be processed, we recommend reports for only the data you need and for shorter periods of time (e.g. doing a monthly report rather than yearly)

  • If a field is selected that started being recorded after the start date of the selected input period, data for that field will not be complete for the time range.


    e.g. My company has existed since January 23, 2023, I select the date range January 23, 2023 to January 23, 2024, and the field “First name” which started being recorded February 6, 2024. I would see an info bar saying “Records for certain fields only go back to 6th Feb 2024


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