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My Rant About Screenshots as Evidence: They Are Not Records

A screenshot is a picture of a claim, not proof of a fact. To an auditor, a PNG file is unverifiable noise. We demand the source export.

Elena Dossier Elena Dossier

A PNG is Not Proof

You believe that a snipping tool is an auditing tool. You paste a screenshot of your bank balance into a Word doc and call it “Proof of Funds.”

To a diligence partner, this is insulting. A screenshot is merely a collection of pixels. It is not a record. It has no metadata. It has no chain of custody. It is the digital equivalent of writing “I have $1M” on a cocktail napkin.

The Suspicion: The Crop Factor

Why do I hate screenshots? Because they are curated lies.

When I see a screenshot of a dashboard, my first question is: What did you crop out?

  • Did you crop out the date because this data is from last month?
  • Did you crop out the error message at the top of the screen?
  • Did you crop out the negative variance column on the far right?

Furthermore, screenshots are trivial to forge. I can Inspect Element on a webpage, change your revenue from $10k to $10M, and take a screenshot in five seconds. Therefore, as an auditor, I must assign a “Trust Score” of zero to any image file that claims to represent financial reality.

The Evidence: The Chain of Custody

If you want your data room to survive scrutiny, you must provide Source Exports.

We require the file that the system generates, not a picture of the system.

The Protocol for Valid Evidence:

  1. Financials: never images. We need .csv or .xlsx exports directly from the ledger. If you must provide a summary, it must be a .pdf of the official Bank Statement, inclusive of all pages (even the blank ones).
  2. Analytics: Do not screenshot the Google Analytics graph. Export the dataset for the requested period. This allows the analyst on the other side to verify the formulas and the date ranges.
  3. Settings/Configs: If you need to prove a setting is enabled (e.g., “MFA is turned on”), Print to PDF.
    • Why? A “Print to PDF” captures the URL and the Timestamp in the footer. This proves where and when the evidence was gathered.

[TO EDITOR: Guidance for illustration. Comparison table. Left column: ‘The Screenshot’ (Red X). Right Column: ‘The Export’ (Green Check). Under Screenshot: ‘No Metadata, Easily Forged, Static’. Under Export: ‘Timestamped, Verifiable, Dynamic’.]

The “Laziness” Tax

Beyond the risk of fraud, screenshots signal operational laziness. They tell me that your team does not know how to extract data from their own systems.

If I ask for a customer churn report and you send me a .jpg, I assume you do not track churn programmatically. I assume you are reacting, not reporting.

Diligence is about proving that your business is a machine, not a series of manual inputs. Show me the machine. Give me the raw data.

FAQs

But screenshots are faster. Does it really matter?

Speed is irrelevant if the data is rejected. I will reject a screenshot 100% of the time. You will have to do it again anyway.

What if the tool doesn't have an export feature?

Then you print to PDF with headers and footers enabled. This captures the URL and the timestamp.

Are screenshots acceptable for UI/UX examples?

Yes. For design, a picture is fine. For financial or operational truth, a picture is hearsay.