Being audit-ready — is it a folder, or a trail?

In most places audit preparation starts a week before the audit: folders are gathered, gaps are filled, signatures are chased. It looks like it works, but what the auditor is after is not a folder — it is when a record changed, by whom, and why. That question cannot be answered retrospectively: either it was captured all along or it was not. This is where an audit trail earns its keep: it is the record nobody prepares, because it accumulates by itself. SenSight QMS keeps changes as who, what and when (ISO 17025 §8.4), and the trail cannot be edited by hand.