Techniques used in configurable systems for providing audit trails for configuration changes. In the techniques, configuration tables in a database system are used to store configuration information. Code is associated with each of the configuration tables that causes changes in the configuration information to be recorded in configuration change tables and the audits are made by querying the configuration change tables. Audit area definition tables define two levels of subsets of the configuration tables and an audit may be limited to one of the defined subsets. An audit may also be limited to changes made by a particular person or changes made over a particular period of time. A simple GUI is used to indicate how the audit is to be limited. The preferred embodiment is implemented in a process control system.