Enterprise compliance teams face a hard truth: SOX, GDPR, HIPAA, and other industry-specific regulations demand comprehensive audit trails of data changes. Unfortunately, standard Salesforce field history tracking has serious limitations. It only supports up to 20 fields, has short retention periods, and leaves gaps in API access. As a result, it creates compliance vulnerabilities that auditors will quickly identify.

To close those gaps and meet regulatory expectations, many teams are turning to Salesforce Field Audit Trail.

This guide shows you how to implement Salesforce Field Audit Trail, starting with initial setup and API configuration. You’ll also learn how to integrate it into your systems and manage it in a way that keeps your compliance program ahead of regulatory demands.

What Is Salesforce Field Audit Trail and When Do You Need It?

Salesforce Field Audit Trail extends Salesforce's standard field history tracking with enterprise-grade audit capabilities designed for regulated environments. Standard field history tracking retains data for 18 months and tracks up to 20 fields per object. Salesforce Field Audit Trail increases this to 10 years of retention and monitors up to 60 fields per object.

Salesforce Field Audit Trail vs. Standard Field History Tracking

Standard field history tracking:

• 18-month data retention maximum
• 20 fields per object limit
• Basic UI-only data access
• Included with most Salesforce editions

Salesforce Field Audit Trail:

• Up to 10 years configurable retention
• 60 fields per object capacity
• Full API access (REST, SOAP, Tooling APIs)
• Requires Salesforce Shield or Event Monitoring add-on

Check your current setup in Setup → Field History Tracking. If you see retention policy options beyond 18 months, Salesforce Field Audit Trail is already enabled.

When Does Your Organization Need Salesforce Field Audit Trail?

You need Salesforce Field Audit Trail when standard tracking cannot meet your governance requirements. Here’s when to consider it:

• Compliance with global data privacy regulations, such as SOX, GDPR, HIPAA, and industry-specific regulations, often mandates audit trails extending beyond 18 months. Financial services typically require 7-year retention periods, while healthcare may need 10+ years.  For organizations focused on SOX compliance, Salesforce Field Audit Trail is indispensable.
• Organizations with complex approval workflows, frequent data migrations, or multiple integration touchpoints need the expanded 60-field capacity to maintain complete audit coverage. 
• When security incidents or compliance violations occur, investigators need programmatic access to historical field changes. Standard tracking's UI-only access creates bottlenecks during time-sensitive investigations.
• Large organizations with strict change management processes rely on API access to integrate audit data with external SIEM tools, data lakes, or compliance reporting systems.

Key Features of Salesforce Field Audit Trail

Salesforce Field Audit Trail gives you more control, more visibility, and better compliance coverage. Here are the features that set it apart from standard tracking:

1. Track Up to 60 Fields Per Object

Salesforce Field Audit Trail monitors 60 fields per object, which is three times the limit of standard field history tracking. When hitting this threshold, rank fields by compliance impact and change frequency. Financial amounts, personal data, and approval workflows demand tracking since auditors focus on these areas.

Create a three-tier classification system:

• High-priority fields (regulatory-sensitive data)
• Medium-priority (business-critical changes)
• Low-priority (informational updates)

Customer financial records, contract modifications, and permission changes belong in your high-priority tier.

2. Configure Retention from 2 to 10 Years

Standard tracking's 24-month limit creates compliance gaps. Salesforce Field Audit Trail's 10-year retention meets SOX's 7-year requirements and adapts to GDPR's varied retention mandates.

Configure Salesforce data retention policies at the object level, applying different periods based on data sensitivity and regulatory requirements.

Storage costs scale with data volume and retention length. Each tracked field change consumes storage, so balance compliance requirements against costs. Keep in mind that critical financial data may warrant 10-year retention, while operational changes may require shorter periods.

3. Access Audit Data Through Multiple APIs

REST, SOAP, and Tooling APIs provide programmatic access to your audit trail data. 

• REST queries like SELECT Field, OldValue, NewValue, CreatedDate FROM AccountHistory WHERE AccountId = 'xxx' retrieve specific field changes 
• SOAP API handles enterprise XML integrations
• Tooling API manages retention policies and tracking configurations.

This API access enables automated compliance reporting, external system integration, and forensic analysis. You can build real-time compliance dashboards, export data for regulatory submissions, and perform bulk analysis during investigations to turn audit trails into compliance intelligence.

How to Configure and Validate Salesforce Field Audit Trail

Implementing Salesforce Field Audit Trail requires both administrative setup and API-based configuration to support consistent policies across environments.

1. Prerequisites and Requirements

You'll need Salesforce Shield with Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, or Developer editions. Your user account requires "Customize Application" permission for configuration and "Modify All Data" permissions for API access to historical audit data.

Storing up to 10 years of field changes across 60 fields per object can use a lot of space, so make sure to plan your storage strategy ahead of time.

2. Enabling Field History Retention

Navigate to Setup > Field History Tracking and select your target object. With Shield enabled, you'll see extended retention options beyond the standard 18-month limit.

Click "Set History Retention" to configure Salesforce Field Audit Trail. Select your retention period (up to 10 years) and enable tracking for up to 60 fields per object. Prioritize fields containing sensitive data, financial information, or those subject to regulatory oversight.

3. Configuring Audit Policies via Metadata API

For programmatic deployment across environments, define retention policies using the Metadata API:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<FieldHistoryRetentionPolicy xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">

    <fullName>Account_Extended_Retention</fullName>

    <description>10-year retention for Account field changes</description>

    <gracePeriodDays>30</gracePeriodDays>

    <retentionYears>10</retentionYears>

    <sobjectName>Account</sobjectName>

</FieldHistoryRetentionPolicy>

Deploy using Salesforce CLI or standard Metadata API calls. The gracePeriodDays parameter provides a deletion buffer, while retentionYears defines your extended retention period.

4. Verification and Testing

Make test changes to tracked fields and confirm recording in the "Field History" related list. Query the FieldHistoryArchive object to access extended historical data:

SELECT Field, OldValue, NewValue, CreatedDate, CreatedBy.Name 

FROM AccountHistory 

WHERE ParentId = 'your_record_id' 

AND CreatedDate < LAST_N_DAYS:548

Monitor data storage usage in Setup > Data and Storage Usage, and test API access for external system integration with compliance reporting tools.

What Are the Benefits of Salesforce Field Audit Trail?

Salesforce Field Audit Trail offers several benefits that strengthen compliance, improve visibility, and support long-term governance:

Meeting Regulatory Requirements Head-On

Salesforce Field Audit Trail's 10-year retention satisfies SOX's 7-year financial record requirements with room to spare. GDPR Article 30 processing records become manageable through comprehensive field-level tracking, while HIPAA's administrative safeguards get the detailed audit trails they demand for protected health information modifications.

The 60-field tracking capacity lets you monitor both financial fields for SOX and personal data fields for GDPR simultaneously. No more choosing between compliance frameworks. You can track comprehensive datasets within a single system without coverage gaps.

Forensic Investigation Capabilities

Salesforce Field Audit Trail's REST API enables programmatic extraction of specific field changes within defined timeframes, while the SOAP API handles batch data retrieval for comprehensive investigations. You can trace exact modification sequences, identify change authors, and correlate changes with external events or system activities. 

The detailed timestamp and user attribution data let you reconstruct events with precision, supporting both internal investigations and external audit requirements. When auditors ask "who changed what and when," you have definitive answers.

Proactive Data Governance

Salesforce Field Audit Trail transforms governance from reactive damage control to proactive oversight. Generate compliance reports showing data modification patterns, identify policy violations through automated change pattern analysis, and provide stakeholders with transparent data lineage access.

Extended retention guarantees governance reporting remains consistent across multi-year periods, giving strategic decisions the historical context they need. 

How to Integrate Salesforce Field Audit Trail with Flosum

To get complete control over both audit logs and backup recovery, pairing Field Audit Trail with Flosum’s Backup & Archive is a good idea.

1. Combining Salesforce Field Audit Trail with Flosum's Backup Solution

Field Audit Trail captures what changed and when, but it doesn’t let you roll back changes or recover deleted records. Flosum fills the gap.

Field Audit Trail helps meet compliance by tracking field-level changes over time. But if a misconfigured integration or user mistake deletes thousands of records—or corrupts a key object—Salesforce offers limited options for recovery. The recycle bin holds deleted records for only 15 days and has a capacity limit. Once it’s full, older records are purged. 

If you rely solely on native recovery, Salesforce’s paid data recovery service costs $10,000 per request, takes weeks, and does not guarantee complete recovery.

Flosum’s Backup & Archive solution closes this risk window. With Composite Backup technology, Flosum captures new, changed, and deleted data then combines it with your existing backup data to avoid full-backup bloat and reduce recovery time. You can recover entire datasets or a single field, exactly as it existed at a previous point in time. And you can do it without disrupting production or overwriting newer valid data.

2. Unified Compliance Strategy

Many business and IT leaders assume Salesforce automatically backs up everything but this is not the case.

While Salesforce offers available infrastructure and uptime guarantees, it lacks built-in backups for elements like:

• Customizations and configurations
• Integrations and custom code
• Reports, dashboards, and records
• Files and metadata

That gap leaves your organization vulnerable to data loss, misconfigurations, or compliance issues.

When you integrate Salesforce Field Audit Trail with Flosum’s backup solution, you build a unified compliance framework:

• Field Audit Trail delivers deep visibility and long-term tracking for audit and regulatory needs
• Flosum ensures your entire data environment is securely backed up and recoverable

Together, they provide the oversight, recovery, and compliance controls enterprise environments demand.

Common Issues with Salesforce Field Audit Trail And How to Fix Them

Salesforce Field Audit Trail offers extended visibility into data changes, but it comes with constraints that can impact performance, storage, and reliability.

Technical Limitations and Workarounds

The 60-field tracking limit can be restrictive when auditing heavily customized objects. Prioritize tracking fields that contain:

• Personally identifiable information (PII)
• Financial data
• Approval status changes

For objects that exceed the 60-field limit, implement a secondary tracking strategy:

• Use Process Builder to log key field changes
• Store these changes in custom audit objects for extended visibility

Storage limits can catch organizations unprepared when tracking high-volume objects. Salesforce Field Audit Trail uses your org’s storage, and tracking frequently updated fields on large objects can quickly take up space. 

Monitor storage usage through Setup > Storage Usage and consider selective field tracking on high-volume objects.

API rate limits affect bulk audit data retrieval. The Tooling API provides the most efficient access to FieldHistoryArchive records, but standard rate limits apply. 

Implement pagination and respect rate limits when building custom audit reports or data exports.

Performance Optimization Strategies

Tracking formula fields creates unnecessary performance overhead since their values derive from other tracked fields. Disable audit tracking on calculated fields unless regulatory requirements specifically mandate it.

Batch your retention policy changes during maintenance windows. Enabling Salesforce Field Audit Trail on objects with extensive field history can trigger large background jobs. Schedule these changes during low-usage periods to minimize impact on user performance.

Configure retention policies strategically. The default 10-year retention might exceed your actual compliance requirements. Shorter retention periods reduce storage overhead and improve query performance when accessing archived data.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Even with proper setup, Salesforce Field Audit Trail can encounter issues that affect data integrity, access, or performance. Here’s how to identify and resolve the most common problems:

Row Locking Conflicts

When multiple updates occur on the same record—especially through integrations—you may see UNABLE_TO_LOCK_ROW errors. These typically happen when audit tracking overlaps with high-frequency writes.

How to fix it:

• Add retry logic to integration processes that modify high-transaction objects.
  Reduce the number of tracked fields on those objects to limit background audit activity.

Missing Audit Data

Retention policy misconfigurations can result in unexpected gaps. If some changes aren’t being recorded, the issue often lies in your metadata setup.

How to fix it:

• Confirm your HistoryRetentionPolicy metadata includes all intended objects and fields.
  Use the SetupAuditTrail object to check for recent changes to retention settings or policy deactivation.

Gaps in Historical Data

Enabling Field Audit Trail after years of using standard field history tracking will not retroactively fill in the gaps. Standard history is limited in scope and duration.

How to fix it:

• Document the switchover date as the official start of your complete audit history.
• Notify compliance teams of expected gaps so they aren’t misinterpreted during audits.

Access and Permission Issues

Users may be unable to retrieve audit data via reports or APIs if permissions are incomplete. Field Audit Trail respects field-level security, which can block access if not properly configured.

How to fix it:

• Ensure users have read access to both the original fields and the corresponding audit objects.
• For compliance teams or audit users, create a permission set that includes access to FieldHistoryArchive, or assign the “View All Data” permission where appropriate.

Extend the Power of Salesforce Field Audit Trail with Flosum

Salesforce Field Audit Trail helps you shift compliance from reactive reporting to proactive data intelligence. With 10-year retention and 60-field tracking, it becomes the foundation for forensic investigations and operational insights.

Integrating with Flosum strengthens this foundation. While Field Audit Trail captures every critical change within Salesforce, Flosum’s Composite Backup technology and built-in encryption ensure that your data and metadata are securely backed up and easily restored.

Together, they give you the depth and reliability needed to meet evolving compliance demands.

You can also automate backup workflows and align with industry frameworks, such as SOX, HIPAA, and GDPR, without requiring manual effort or additional tools.

To get started, reach out to us to learn how Flosum’s platform can enhance your Salesforce Field Audit Trail setup and help you build a stronger compliance posture.