A useful picture is a line of footprints. Somebody walked through here and left one mark for each step, so anyone who comes later can follow the marks back to where the walking started. An audit trail is that line of marks made out of records: each entry is one footprint, and the value is in the chain, not in any single print. Where the chain breaks, the path stops.
Two branches
錢走過的路
腳印印在帳本上：每一筆進出都是一個印子，查帳的人順著它們往回走。
noun · C1
A set of accounting records that show, step by step, the money movements that led to the way a company's finances look now, so that a checker can follow them back to where each amount came from.
稽核軌跡；查帳線索
系統裡留下的腳印
同一排腳印換了地面：不是印在帳本上，而是印在電腦系統裡。追的東西從「錢去哪裡」變成「誰動過什麼」。
noun · C1
A record, kept on paper or by the computer itself, of how a computer system has been used — who opened it, when, and what they did in it.
操作紀錄；使用軌跡