What Is a Salesforce Audit and Why You Need One
A comprehensive guide to understanding Salesforce org audits, what they cover, and how they can improve your ROI.
A Salesforce audit is a comprehensive assessment of your Salesforce org's health, performance, and alignment with best practices. Think of it as a thorough checkup for your CRM—identifying issues before they become critical problems and uncovering opportunities to get more value from your investment.
Why Do You Need a Salesforce Audit?
Over time, Salesforce orgs accumulate what we call "technical debt." Admins change, business requirements evolve, and quick fixes become permanent solutions. This gradual buildup can lead to:
- Slower performance — Pages take longer to load, reports time out, and users get frustrated
- Higher maintenance costs — Simple changes require extensive testing because of complex dependencies
- Security vulnerabilities — Overly permissive access controls expose sensitive data
- Low user adoption — Confusing interfaces and broken processes drive users away
- Limited scalability — Architectural decisions made years ago now constrain growth
What Does a Salesforce Audit Cover?
A comprehensive audit examines six key areas of your org:
1. Configuration & Architecture
We review your data model, object relationships, page layouts, and overall org structure. Are you using standard objects where you should? Is your architecture scalable? Are there redundant custom objects that could be consolidated?
2. Automation & Code Quality
This includes Flows, Process Builders, Apex triggers, and any custom code. We look for performance issues, governor limit risks, conflicting automations, and opportunities to modernize legacy workflows.
3. Data Integrity
Bad data leads to bad decisions. We analyze duplicate records, data completeness, field utilization, and storage optimization. Many orgs are paying for storage they don't need.
4. Security & Permissions
We audit profiles, permission sets, sharing rules, and field-level security. The goal is ensuring users have exactly the access they need—no more, no less.
5. User Adoption
We analyze login patterns, feature usage, and common pain points. If users aren't using Salesforce effectively, you're not getting your money's worth.
6. Best Practices Compliance
We benchmark your org against Salesforce's Well-Architected framework and industry standards. This helps identify gaps and prioritize improvements.
When Should You Get an Audit?
There are several ideal times to conduct a Salesforce audit:
- Post-implementation — Catch issues early before they become embedded
- Before a major project — Ensure your foundation is solid
- After team changes — New leadership often inherits undocumented technical debt
- Annual checkup — Even healthy orgs benefit from regular assessment
- Performance issues — When things are slow or breaking, find the root cause
What Do You Get From an Audit?
A good audit delivers more than just a list of problems. You should receive:
- Executive summary — High-level findings for leadership
- Detailed technical assessment — Specific issues with evidence
- Risk severity ratings — Prioritized by impact and urgency
- Remediation roadmap — Actionable steps to fix each issue
- Effort estimates — Help with planning and budgeting
Why Choose an Independent Auditor?
Your implementation partner has a conflict of interest—they built your org, so they're unlikely to criticize it. Internal teams are often too close to see issues objectively. An independent auditor provides an unbiased perspective focused solely on helping you improve.
At CircleQA, we combine deep Salesforce expertise with AI-powered analysis to deliver comprehensive audits in 2-3 weeks. We don't sell implementations, so our only goal is telling you the truth about your org.