Preservation of Audit Trails ​

19. The auditor is required to comment whether ‘the audit trail has been preserved by the company as per the statutory requirements for record retention’. Considering the requirement of Section 128(5) of the Act, which requires books of account to be preserved by companies for a minimum period of eight years, the company would need to retain audit trail for a minimum period of eight years i.e., effective from the date of applicability of the Account Rules (i.e., currently April 1, 2023, onwards).