Audit trail, records and account controls for an agency

What an agency can show an auditor: the Audit Trail and label print records, how long shipment records are kept, and the controls over who can sign in and what each account can do.

The Audit Trail

Open the Insights menu and choose Audit Trail. It appears only for people whose role includes it, so an auditor or records officer can have it without administering anything. Entries cannot be edited from any screen.

It covers shipments, approvals, people and access, settings and structure, imports, the address book, exports and bulk actions, and Mercury support access. Each line says when, who, what happened and the record it is about.

1. It opens on this week. Set the date range you are asked about. When nothing matches, the page offers Show all time.
2. Search by person or by what happened, or filter by area.
3. For labels, open More filters and use Labels and invoices to list every label print, every reprint with its reason, or every label and commercial invoice opened or saved.
4. Choose Export CSV. The file holds exactly what you are looking at, and the export itself is recorded.

A second print of the same label asks for a reason unless an administrator turns off Ask why when a label is printed again in the Label output section of Settings. Turning it off stops the question, not the record. More on the Audit Trail and reports is in Reports and the Audit Trail.

How long records are kept

Shipping Center keeps two periods for your agency. After the first, recipient and sender names, street lines, and the recipient's phone and email are removed, while the city, the tracking number and the amounts stay so reports still add up. After the second, the shipment record is deleted. These periods are set by Mercury for your agency and show with a lock on the Settings screen. To change them to match your records schedule, ask Mercury support.

Who can sign in

• Single sign-on. Mercury connects your identity provider. You then control, under Manage, Organization & SSO, on the Sign-in & SSO card, the button label, the email domains routed to it and whether password sign-in continues alongside it. People then sign in with their agency account.
• No passwords handed out. A new user gets a single-use link that expires and sets their own password. Nobody sets or emails a password for them. See Sign in to Shipping Center.
• Shared counters. A public counter computer can be a shared station that locks itself when idle and is unlocked with a name and a PIN. See Use a shared shipping station.

Review accounts

Under Manage, choose Users.

• The tiles count All users, Waiting for approval, Active, Inactive, Rejected, Administrators, Never signed in and Waiting on invite, and each opens its list. Waiting for approval means people who signed in through single sign-on and need an administrator to let them in. The list shows when each person last signed in.
• Active now lists who has done something recently, and what it was.
• On a person's page, Effective access shows what they can do today and what decided it. Roles and any rights given to that person alone are on the Access and Direct rights cards.
• Deactivate is on the Users list. On a person's page, you can instead set Status to Inactive and save. Either way, access ends at their next request. Only a super administrator can deactivate another administrator.

Every account created, approved, activated or deactivated, and every role or right granted or taken away, is recorded in the Audit Trail under People and access.

Mercury support

Shipments Mercury support looks up from your help requests are listed on your Audit Trail under Support access, for every organization. Visits by Mercury staff to your organization are listed there only when your organization has turned on privacy protection for sensitive shipments. See What Mercury support can see.