Capture meaningful changes
Prioritise salary revisions, attendance corrections, payment-detail changes and approval events. Record who made the change, what changed and when it took effect. The modification time and business effective date serve different purposes and should not be confused.
Connect evidence to the decision
Keep a reference to the approved request or supporting record. Explain why a manual adjustment was necessary. Avoid placing unnecessary personal detail in broadly visible logs; the trail should point authorised reviewers to evidence without turning every log view into a sensitive document store.
Preserve the approved version
A later edit should not make it impossible to see what was actually paid. Retain the payroll version, approval and payment reconciliation together. Test whether someone unfamiliar with the run can follow a sample correction from request through output.
Worked example
For a corrected attendance day, the reviewer should find the raw punches, approved change, reason and payroll period that used the corrected result. Each link answers a different question.
Practical checklist
- Record before-and-after values where relevant.
- Distinguish change time from effective date.
- Link approvals to the exact payroll version.