A framework for comprehensive auditing of applications involved in business processes in distributed application landscapes, including local, distributed and collaborative audit, is based on the concept of a collaborative "audit warehouse" that enables a central, tool-supported audit of cross-enterprise business processes. The interface for the audit data warehouse is defined in an intermediate format language with verification capabilities, such as XML (Extensible Markup Language). Applications in effect write audit data to audit data pools in the warehouse, e.g., in XML format transferred via http over the Internet. Alternatively, data is pulled from the applications by the warehouse automatically or on command. In one preferred paradigm individual enterprises have their own central audit data warehouses, each collecting data from applications both within and outside of the enterprise that owns the warehouse, in order to aggregate audit data for a given business process spanning potentially several distinct enterprises.