This guidance is specifically for when you don't intend to use the standard checklists such as ISO 9001, 14001, 45001, IATF etc. because the only relevant checklist is one which is being supplied to you from an outside source such as a Customer following their audit on ESI.  This could also apply to a 3rd party such as LRQA. It is strongly recommended however to always use a standard checklist to make full use of the subsequent reporting available against clauses.

The following example is a customer audit. Complete the details by selecting External and Customers.

Here you can click on Select and find the customer name. If you are unable to find the customer in the list, please raise a Helpdesk ticket request to have the supplier added.

Although this particular audit is being conducted by a 3rd party, you should add the ESI auditor who is hosting the auditor and the person who will complete this audit outcome.

In the checklist section, click Add Entry and add as normal the relevant checklist e.g. ISO 9001. Alternatively, if the audit questions are unknown at this time or are unrelated to a particular standard, you can for example add 'Customer Audit'. This is a single question checklist in order to fulfil the mandatory requirement for a checklist to be added to an audit. If there are no checklists added then an error message will occur when you try to progress.

As usual, enter the auditor/author who will manage this record.

You can at this stage click in to the Version field and choose which version of the selected checklist you wish to use for the audit. This is useful if you have different versions of a similar checklist and you may want to alternate depending on the audit type. In the example below we have chosen to apply version 1.

When all entries are complete, you can schedule the audit.

When the time has arrived to complete the audit, click on Conduct Audit.

If you hadn't already selected the version of the checklist, you can do so at this step then put a check mark against the checklist and click 'Generate Questions. This will populate the checklist with the questions from your chosen version. The auditor can then open the checklist and complete the single question.

Once you have received the audit report from the 3rd party, you can attach it here. If NC's have been reported by the 3rd party then these should be created as normal using Findings and Action Plans available by opening the checklist you loaded.