BetterFlow Team

ARTICLE

The compliance officer role: weekly reports and audit trail management

Q: What is covered in: The compliance officer role: weekly reports and audit trail management?

Compliance officers need different access patterns than project managers or employees. Dedicated compliance features enable weekly report generation, audit trail exports, and timesheet discrepancy detection.

February 03, 2026

3 min read

BetterFlow Team

Compliance officers have different needs than project managers or team leads. They are not managing daily work; they are ensuring the organization meets regulatory requirements, can respond to audits, and maintains proper records. At BetterQA, we added dedicated compliance features to BetterFlow after realizing our existing reports did not serve compliance workflows.

The compliance officer role

BetterFlow includes a dedicated Compliance Officer role with specific permissions:

Read access to all timesheet data across the organization
Export capabilities for audit-ready reports
Access to audit trails showing all data modifications
Ability to generate compliance reports on demand
No ability to modify timesheet data (separation of duties)

This role can be assigned alongside other roles. A finance manager might also have compliance access, or a dedicated compliance officer might have only this role.

Weekly compliance reports

Compliance requirements often involve regular reporting. BetterFlow generates automated weekly reports including:

Timesheet completion rates: Which employees submitted timesheets on time, which were late, which are missing

Approval status: Which timesheets are approved, pending, or rejected

Anomaly flags: Entries that triggered AI-based anomaly detection

Policy violations: Entries that violate configured rules (overtime limits, required approvals, etc.)

Reports can be emailed automatically or accessed on-demand through the dashboard.

Audit trail management

Every modification to timesheet data creates an audit record:

Original entry creation
Any edits (with before/after values)
Approval actions
Lock/unlock actions
Deletion (soft delete preserves data)

Audit trails are immutable. Even administrators cannot delete audit records. This ensures that when an auditor asks "what happened to this entry?" there is always an answer.

Export formats for audits

External auditors need data in specific formats. BetterFlow supports:

Detailed CSV: Every field, every entry, suitable for analysis in Excel or audit software

Summary PDF: Formatted reports suitable for inclusion in audit documentation

Audit trail CSV: Complete modification history for specified date ranges

API access: For integration with enterprise audit platforms

Exports include metadata: when the export was generated, who generated it, what filters were applied. This ensures exports themselves are auditable.

Discrepancy detection

Compliance officers often need to identify patterns of concern:

Timesheet gaps: Employees with missing days or weeks

Approval delays: Timesheets pending approval beyond configured thresholds

Policy violations: Entries exceeding overtime limits, working on holidays without approval

Retroactive entries: Time logged significantly after the fact

The compliance dashboard highlights these patterns without requiring manual review of every entry.

Regulatory requirements support

Different industries have specific timesheet requirements:

Government contractors: DCAA compliance requires detailed timekeeping with specific fields

Healthcare: Tracking against grant funding with allocation reporting

Financial services: SOX requirements for internal controls

European operations: GDPR data retention and access requirements

BetterFlow's compliance features can be configured for specific regulatory requirements, and compliance officers can validate that the configuration meets their needs.

About BetterFlow

Built by BetterQA, a software testing company. BetterFlow's compliance features give compliance officers the tools they need without burdening everyday users with compliance complexity.

Sources & References

Published by BetterQA, an ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified company with 8+ years of experience in software quality assurance. According to research by McKinsey, data-driven project management improves team productivity by up to 25%. Last updated on February 22, 2026.