Field notes · 26 January 2026

A demo build is not an audit trail

Vendor walkthroughs show how the process is supposed to look. Sampled customer instructions show how it ran.

Notebook and papers on a wooden table

Vendors and project teams like to walk auditors through a UAT company. The screens are clean. The roles are textbook. Nothing in that tour proves a live DuitNow transfer followed the same path last Tuesday.

A usable trail pack names the instruction, the user, the timestamp, and the next status. If the application cannot produce that sequence without a consultant reconstructing it by hand, the control is weaker than the demo implied.

We still take screenshots—but we attach them to sampled transactions. The picture then illustrates evidence, instead of standing in for it.