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Is it ok to use the internal audit from the previous year if no changes have been made?

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Best Answer , 14 April 2022 - 10:45 AM

Are you saying that your internal auditor plans to copy/paste the entirety of last year's report? And has determined that they plan to do this before they've actually conducted the physical exercise of auditing the site/systems?
With the greatest respect, that sounds like terrible practice!

 

It's not unheard of to use the previous report as a template/starting point - pretty much every BRC auditor I've had in the last ten years has done exactly this with the full BRC audit - but obviously they go through the actual auditing process and change details based on what they find. It sounds like your internal auditor isn't planning to do this?

 

If I found an audit report that was identical apart from the audit dates I'd be extremely suspicious, so I could see the auditor deciding that the internal audit didn't really satisfy the requirements of section 3.5 - how do you demonstrate that all process have *really* been audited if the report is identical to the previous year's?
 

In practice I'm not sure many auditors would do a comparison of last year / current year audits, but that may depend on how much you have on file for them to look through. And note that this section of the standard is marked as a fundamental requirement, so non-compliance could have serious implications for your grade (up to and including non-certification, in theory).


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smart17

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Posted 14 April 2022 - 10:31 AM

Dear all , 

 

We are planning to do our internal audit next week for the BRCGS(issue 6)  requirement . Our internal auditor will do it for the audit for the 3rd time in row, it has been trained in the BRCGS academy. Is it okay  for him to use last year report  and change only the days because in some clauses is not any changes or updates. Is the auditor will accept it ? or will be non conformance? 

 

Thank you



pHruit

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Posted 14 April 2022 - 10:45 AM   Best Answer

Are you saying that your internal auditor plans to copy/paste the entirety of last year's report? And has determined that they plan to do this before they've actually conducted the physical exercise of auditing the site/systems?
With the greatest respect, that sounds like terrible practice!

 

It's not unheard of to use the previous report as a template/starting point - pretty much every BRC auditor I've had in the last ten years has done exactly this with the full BRC audit - but obviously they go through the actual auditing process and change details based on what they find. It sounds like your internal auditor isn't planning to do this?

 

If I found an audit report that was identical apart from the audit dates I'd be extremely suspicious, so I could see the auditor deciding that the internal audit didn't really satisfy the requirements of section 3.5 - how do you demonstrate that all process have *really* been audited if the report is identical to the previous year's?
 

In practice I'm not sure many auditors would do a comparison of last year / current year audits, but that may depend on how much you have on file for them to look through. And note that this section of the standard is marked as a fundamental requirement, so non-compliance could have serious implications for your grade (up to and including non-certification, in theory).



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smart17

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Posted 14 April 2022 - 11:09 AM

HI 

 

Thank you so much for the fast and detailed answer . 

"Are you saying that your internal auditor plans to copy/paste the entirety of last year's report?"  Probably , I did not explained it  its not going to copy paste. 

We are going to make the internal audit but we wanted  to use the previous report as a template/starting point  and  go through the actual auditing process and change details based on what they find as you quote before. This answer my question to my topic . 

 

Kind Regards 

Themis 



Ian Nairn

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Posted 28 April 2022 - 03:30 PM

If you are planning to use the previous years audit as a template, then yes this is acceptable, however even if no changes are made in the process, it is highly unlikely that any findings of an audit 12 months would remain the same unless any non conformances picked up during the audit have not been actioned and closed out, IMO if you were simply to cut and paste the previous audit then this is highly unacceptable and a bad representation of our standards and those our clients expect.





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