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Sage Payroll – Unable to open Audit Trail/Error opening PAYAUDIT files

Written by fiona on .

When you’re setting a new pay period or processing your payroll, the following messages may appear:

        ‘Unable to open Audit Trail’  or

        ‘Error opening PAYAUDIT’

To close this message, click OK. This issue occurs if the payroll’s audit files are too large to clear down within Sage Payroll. This is caused by:

  • The Audit retention setting for this payroll being too high or not set at all.
  • Additional files, such as backups (PAYBACK.CTL, PAYBACK.CRC & PAYBACK.001) and reports being saved into the Payroll folder.
  • A combination of both of the above.

To resolve this and prevent it re-occurring, you must replace the existing audit files with a clean set.

To replace the PAYAUDIT files

Download the 2 PAYAUDIT files from links below:

Locate the files in your downloads folder and highlight both together and copy.

Browse to and open the company payroll folder you want to replace the audit files for eg Weekly.

Right-click your mouse on a blank area of the window and left-click Paste.
When prompted, click Copy and Replace.
Close and reopen Sage Payroll.
Once you’ve done this, then remove any files that should not be in the Sage Payroll payroll folder. For example, PAYBACK.CTL, PAYBACK.CRC, PAYBACK.001, .pdf, .csv, or .xls files.  The Archive folder found in the Payroll folder contains all previous period archives which are made up of the three PAYBACK files. These files should not be removed. Only those PAYBACK files found in the root Payroll folder should be removed.