How Long Your History Stays Online
“How long do you keep our history?” sounds like one question and is three. What a retention period actually removes, what it never touches, and why a plan can cap how long the audit trail is kept but never shortens it.
An auditor asks who approved a payment eighteen months ago. A donor asks for the trail behind a procurement from last year. A dispute turns on whether a stock adjustment was entered before or after a delivery. Each of these is a question about history, and each one is answered — or not — by a setting most organisations never open until the day they need it.
Three kinds of history
The word covers three different things, and only one of them is ever on a clock.
| What | Examples | On a retention period? |
|---|---|---|
| Your records | Invoices, stock movements, purchase orders, ledger entries, employee files | No. They stay until you delete them. |
| The trail about them | The audit log, activity history | Yes, a period you set within your plan. |
| Operational logs | Email logs, notifications, sync logs, report exports | Yes, a period you set for each. |
So the eighteen-month-old payment is still there whatever the settings say. What a retention period decides is whether the audit log entry recording who approved it is still online — and for an auditor, that entry is the evidence.
Where the periods are set
Settings › Security › Data retention lists one policy per kind of log, each a number of days. When a period passes, a scheduled job removes the expired entries. Two safeguards sit in front of that job: deleted records wait in Trash for a period you also set before they are permanently removed, and anything under a legal hold is held back from every retention run until the hold is released.
Set them deliberately
A retention period is a policy decision, not a technical default. Match the audit log to the longest period anyone might ask you to evidence — your auditors, your donors or your regulator — rather than leaving whatever was there on day one.
What the plan has to do with it
Each plan sets the longest you can keep the audit log and activity history online, and the figure for every plan is in the pricing comparison. It governs how far you can raise that period. It does not work in the other direction: if a longer period is already set, it is kept as it is.
Shortening a retention period deletes history. That is never done to enforce a plan.
This matters most when a workspace moves to a smaller plan. The trail it has already built is not trimmed to fit; it simply cannot be extended past the smaller plan’s figure until the plan grows again. The audit trail is evidence, and evidence should never disappear because of a billing change.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- One retention policy per kind of log, set in days from Settings › Security.
- Business records kept until you delete them, with no retention clock.
- A Trash period before permanent removal, and legal holds that exempt rows from every retention run.
- A plan figure that bounds raising the audit log and activity history, and never shortens a period already set.
More we can add to your workspace
- An export of expiring audit entries to your own archive before they are removed.
- A per-module retention period for the activity history, rather than one for all of it.
Where we point you to a specialist
- We do not tell you how long the law requires you to keep a record — that depends on your country, sector and contracts, and belongs with your auditor or lawyer.
Either of the middle column can be added to your workspace.
Anything above that you need, we can build for you
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do for your organisation. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are both in the product because clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself, and the same door is open for whatever you just read about. One qualification so this is worth what it claims: a small number of things on this blog we deliberately leave to a specialist rather than build — a statutory ledger we will not sign our name to, a rule that would decide a tax question for you, a clinical or member-funds record that belongs in a regulated system — and where that is true the post says so in those words. Everything else is a scope, a timeline and a price.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
The module-shaped additions, which are the ones readers ask for most often
A price list with real discount authority, a customer-facing quotation that expires, a bill of materials or recipe costing, a staff advance that is issued, acquitted and chased, a member or unit ledger, a matching rule that holds a payment. Each of these is a build rather than a setting, and each has been quoted before — a bigger piece of work than a custom field, with a written spec and a date instead of a roadmap slide.
The report, document or pack nothing currently produces
The board pack in the shape your board actually asks for, a donor or funder layout, an invoice or receipt template carrying what your regulator or your customer expects, a dataset the report builder cannot reach yet. Usually the fastest thing on this list to deliver, because the data is already in the system.
Systems, rails and hardware you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store, core banking or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed. Plus the physical edge: a scanner, a scale, a weighbridge or a till peripheral feeding the door it belongs to.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. Nothing here waits on a regulator or a published specification, which is why operational builds are the ones we quote fastest. Tell us the requirement that would otherwise rule us out — that is a better first conversation than a demo.
Tell us what your operation needsThree questions for your retention settings
How far back could we be asked to evidence an approval?
A good answer
A named period from audit, donor or regulator.
Why it matters
That is the floor for the audit log.
Who can place a legal hold, and who releases it?
A good answer
Named people, not “IT”.
Why it matters
A hold nobody can release is as risky as none.
Does our plan allow the period we need?
A good answer
Its figure on the pricing comparison.
Why it matters
If not, the plan is the conversation, not the setting.
Our take
Your records are never on a clock; only the trail and the logs are. Set the audit log to the longest period anyone could ask you to evidence, keep legal holds for what is in dispute, and check that your plan allows that period — because a plan change will never shorten history you already have, but it will stop you extending it.
History kept online, by plan
The longest audit and activity period for every plan, with the rest of the limits.
Compare plansFrequently asked questions
How long does AWRA OpsHub keep our records?
Business records such as invoices, stock movements and ledger entries are kept until you delete them. Retention periods apply only to the audit log, activity history and operational logs.
What does the plan limit on history mean?
Each plan sets the longest you can keep the audit log and activity history online. It limits how far you can raise that period, and it never shortens a period already set.
Does moving to a smaller plan delete our audit history?
No. A longer period already set is kept as it is. It simply cannot be extended beyond the smaller plan’s figure.
Can we stop records being removed while there is a dispute?
Yes. Records under a legal hold are held back from every retention run until the hold is released.
