Updated Oct 2026

What the audit trail records, and why it holds up

Say a carrier asks about a post from last spring. They want to know what it said, who cleared it, and whether it was checked before it went out. This page explains what PostSignOff can show them, and why the record is built the way it is. To find all of this on screen, see Keep an audit trail of what went out.

What the record holds

For any published post, the record has several parts.

First, the published copy itself, exactly as it went out, text and images both. Some older posts went out before this copy was saved. For those, the record is rebuilt from the post’s current text and labeled reconstructed. So you always know which kind you’re looking at.

Next, the AI’s first draft. When you edit a post, your edit is saved apart from it. The original is never written over. So the record shows what the AI wrote and what a person turned it into.

Then the edit history. Each time the text is saved with a change, a new version is added. The record keeps the first version and the 19 newest. A change to only the sign-off or hashtags doesn’t add a version. Older posts may show only their first version, from before every edit was kept.

The compliance review, if your brand has compliance review turned on. Each check is its own record, tied to the exact text, sign-off, and hashtags it read. Edit the post and check it again, and a new record is saved next to the old one. Nothing gets replaced. A post’s compliance history is a series of reviews, each one matched to the words it checked. The History drawer shows the newest of them.

Any acknowledgement of findings. It records who made it, when, the confirmation text they ticked, and a fingerprint of the exact text it covered.

The approval, with who approved and when, for posts approved in the app. The History drawer shows the approver as an internal account ID, not a name or email. Posts approved before this was tracked may show nothing here.

Last, the post’s lineage. That’s the campaign or template it came from.

Why the published copy is locked

Once a post publishes, its text, sign-off, and hashtags can never change again. Not by you, not by anyone. There’s no override. And a published post can’t be deleted.

That sounds strict, and it is, on purpose. A record you can edit later is a record you can’t rely on. Anyone reading it later couldn’t be sure it still says what it said that day. The lock is what makes the published copy good evidence. When you show someone what went out, you’re showing them something nobody could have quietly changed.

What stays, and what can go

Rejecting a post doesn’t delete it. It keeps its text and its history, and you can bring it back later.

A post that never published can be deleted, though. It waits in the Trash for 30 days. After that, or sooner if someone empties the trash, its text is deleted for good. A post that published can’t be deleted at all, so the record of what went out always stays.

This matters for the same reason the lock does. A review process that lets drafts vanish has holes in its story. If a reviewer turned something down, that decision is part of how you show the process worked. The posts you turned down say as much about your review as the posts you approved. So think twice before you delete rejected posts.

When you approve over a finding

Sometimes a compliance check flags words you’ve decided to keep. When you acknowledge the finding and approve anyway, the record shows it. You see the review’s status and summary, an “Attested by … on …” line, and the confirmation text.

That’s a position you can defend. The trail shows a person saw the finding, weighed it, and made a call. It shows the date, and the exact words. A trail with no record of the finding can’t show that. And the acknowledgement is tied by fingerprint to the exact text that was checked. So it can’t quietly carry over to new words. Change the words, and you need a fresh check and a fresh decision. See Acknowledge findings and approve anyway for how that works day to day.

What the record is for

In practice, people use this record in three ways. One is to answer a carrier or regulator about a single post. Another is your own look back at what was published and how it was handled. The third is to show that a supervision process exists at all. The content was drafted, checked, decided on by a specific account, and published, in that order. Each step is on record.