Who this is for: Anyone new to auditing. No permissions needed.
An audit is a structured check that what your organisation says it does is what it actually does. Someone works through a defined set of requirements, gathers evidence, and records where practice matches the requirement and where it does not.
Audits differ from day-to-day inspections in three ways:
They follow a defined set of criteria. Usually a standard (ISO 9001, ISO 45001), a regulation, or your own documented procedure.
They are evidence-based. An auditor records what they saw, read or measured — not an opinion.
They produce a record. The output is a report that can be shown to a certification body, a regulator, a customer or your own board.
Organisations run audits for several reasons, and most run more than one type:
Reason | What it looks like |
Certification | An external body audits you against a standard so you can hold or keep certification |
Regulatory duty | A legal requirement to check and record compliance |
Customer requirement | A client audits you, or requires you to audit your own suppliers |
Internal assurance | You check yourselves before someone else does |
Continuous improvement | Finding things worth improving even where nothing is non-compliant |
The Audit Module supports all of these. It does not tell you what to audit — that is your organisation’s decision, usually driven by the standards you work to.