Prepare for a Supplier Audit: Factory Checklist for a Buyer’s Visit

What should you do as soon as the buyer announces its audit?

Get in writing what the audit must allow the buyer to decide, and on what basis. A supplier that prepares for “a customer audit” without knowing the checklist prepares for the wrong audit. Send these questions on the day the audit is announced. If you are the buyer, this is the information your supplier needs from you.

Also check that the buyer can read your certificate. It will look it up in the BRCGS Directory, the FSSC Public Register or the IFS Database: the scope shown must cover the audited product. A scope gap the buyer discovers before the visit will steer the whole audit.

Which documents should you gather, and in what order?

Those that prove the buyer’s product is under control, from contract to dispatch. File them in the order of the process flow, not in the order of your manual. The first is the approval or sanitary authorisation issued by ONSSA, Morocco’s national food safety authority. The table lists the documents the auditor almost always asks for, and the trap that goes with each one.

Two points deserve particular attention in 2027. If you manufacture under the buyer’s brand, FSSC 22000 Version 7 requires artwork management and print control when the site prints its own labels; any buyer will expect the same rigour. And if your products go to the EU, the manufacturer of the packaging under the PPWR draws up its declaration of conformity from information supplied by its suppliers, according to the Commission’s FAQ: prepare what you know about your packaging.

How should you prepare the shop floor and the teams?

By running the buyer’s product, with the usual teams, and by rehearsing the visit. The auditor judges the practices observed; a stopped plant or a stand-in team shows something other than your everyday operation.

• Plan production. The audited product runs during the visit, ideally with a changeover scheduled, to show line clearance and the removal of the previous run’s labels.
• Walk the auditor’s route. Goods-in, storage, production, packing, dispatch, laboratory, changing rooms: do the tour a week before, with an outside eye.
• Prepare people, not answers. Each team leader explains, in their own language, what they check, how often and what they do when something is out of specification. An answer learned by heart is spotted at once.
• Name the guides. One manager accompanies the auditor, another fetches the documents. Nobody leaves the visit to “sort out a problem” on the floor.
• Do not cover up. Painting a floor the day before or filling in late records is noticed, and costs more than an acknowledged gap.

If operators speak mainly Arabic or Darija, the Moroccan dialect, tell the buyer at scoping: interpretation is planned, not improvised.

How do you pass the traceability exercise and the mass balance?

By doing it before the auditor does, on a batch of the buyer’s product, and by timing it. The exercise starts from a finished product batch and traces back to the raw materials and packaging, then forward to dispatches. The mass balance compares the quantities received, produced, downgraded and shipped.

For a site certified to BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9, the standard expects full traceability within four hours at most; a buyer may set its own time limit in its specification. For a claim printed on the pack (origin, free-from allergen, production method), FSSC 22000 Version 7 requires verification through traceability and mass balance: expect the auditor to pick precisely that batch.

Run the exercise twice: once on a batch you choose, once on a batch picked at random by someone outside the quality team. If the second one runs over the time limit, you know where to look.

How should you behave on the day of the audit?

Answer the question asked, with evidence, and let the auditor lead. The day usually follows the same sequence: opening meeting, plant tour, interviews, document review, tests, closing meeting.

Do: confirm the programme at the opening meeting; show the record rather than describe it; acknowledge an obvious gap; note each finding announced; ask for clarification when a requirement is unclear.

Avoid: disputing every remark; closing off an area “under works” without warning; producing a document created that morning; letting the consultant or the managing director answer for the line supervisor; promising an action with no owner and no date.

The closing meeting presents the findings before the auditor leaves the site. It is the moment to correct a misunderstanding, with evidence, and to agree the deadline for the action plan.

What should you do after the audit to be approved?

Send, by the agreed deadline, an action plan that addresses root causes and provides evidence. The buyer judges not only the gaps but how you deal with them. Each line of the plan includes the immediate correction, the root cause analysis, the corrective action, its owner, its date and the evidence of completion.

Compare two responses to the same finding: label artwork changed without the buyer’s approval. Weak response: “Reminder given to the artwork department.” Strong response: “Labels in stock checked and compliant; root cause: no customer approval step in the artwork change procedure; procedure amended and team trained; revised procedure, dated attendance list and newly approved artwork attached.”

The buyer-side rules for follow-up and closure are on our audits and inspections page; what the buyer expects as a deliverable is described in our guide to supplier audits in Morocco.

Which mistakes make a supplier audit fail?

They look alike from one site to the next, in Morocco as in West Africa:

1. Preparing your certificate instead of the buyer’s specification. The auditor comes to check what the certification body did not see.
2. Holding the audit on a day the product is not running. What is not observed cannot be approved.
3. Hiding a subcontractor. A step handed to a third party and discovered during the audit destroys trust more than a technical gap.
4. Forgetting packaging. Unapproved packaging suppliers, unapproved artwork, no PPWR information.
5. Testing traceability on a prepared batch. The auditor picks their own.
6. Training the teams the day before. Last-minute training shows in the interviews and in the records.
7. Answering findings with promises. Without a root cause, an owner, a date and evidence, the finding stays open.

Run this check at D-30, D-7 and D-1:

• D-30: the objective, checklist, scope, language and date are confirmed in writing by the buyer.
  
• D-30: the buyer’s checklist is compared with your practices, and gaps are listed and assigned to an owner.
  
• D-30: your certificate scope and your ONSSA approval cover the audited product and address.
  
• D-7: a traceability exercise and a mass balance have been run on a randomly picked batch, with their duration.
  
• D-7: the product’s artwork, specifications and allergen matrix are up to date and approved.
  
• D-7: the list of subcontractors and packaging suppliers is ready, with their approvals.
  
• D-1: the product is scheduled in production, with the usual teams and a changeover.
  
• D-1: guides, meeting room, files and access to electronic records are ready.
  

For a full certification project, not just a customer audit, read working with a BRCGS consultant, step by step. To understand what is bringing your buyers back more often, see our update on buyer requirements in 2026–2027.