Account history is a term especially useful for investment accounts, where transactions beyond a current month or year’s records are useful for reference.

Most people are familiar with the transaction history that is available for the current month, quarter, or year on an individual’s savings, checking, and credit card accounts. These are often called “activity ledgers” or something similar.

Account history that reaches further back might be more useful for investment accounts, where the current value of investments, and their cost basis, will depend heavily on account history from potentially years in the past. This sort of query can be made easily with online investment account viewing software from a broker or custodian company.

Another example would be the account history of a corporate client account for which an individual is the servicing representative, and the maintenance and service of the products and services that a client has purchased or used in the past is important for the course of current business. All transactions that pertain to a given account should be available in an account history.

It is important in some industries to keep records with account history for a specific number of years, such as 7 years in some instances for accounting firms. These records can be used for audits, and it could be detrimental not to have them if requested.

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