Vendor Audit Checklist

Description

This template serves as a detailed Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for vendor auditing. It is structured into four primary sections: General Information & Documentation, Quality & Performance, Security & Compliance, and Financial & Business Continuity. Each section contains a series of yes/no checklist questions to ensure all critical verification steps are completed. The template prominently features the Company Name and the overall Status of the audit (e.g., APPROVED, NOT APPROVED) as visual badges. Crucially, each section automatically calculates its completion percentage, giving the auditor and manager a real-time view of compliance status. Final sections allow for logging the Auditor Name, Audit Date, and crucial Audit Findings and Comments.

Key Data Stored

• Audit Identity: The Company Name, Audit Date, Auditor Name, and Auditor Assistant Name.
• Audit Status: The current Status of the audit (e.g., APPROVED) and the overall calculated compliance percentage.
• Documentation Checks: Verification of profile accuracy, business license and registration currency, contract clarity, signed terms, liability insurance, and validation of required certifications (e.g., ISO).
• Quality & Performance Checks: Assessment of quality control procedures, non-conforming product processes, evidence of quality checks, performance against SLAs, and systems for monitoring KPIs and corrective actions.
• Security & Compliance Checks: Review of data privacy and security policies (e.g., GDPR), incident response plans, penetration testing history, adherence to industry regulations (e.g., FDA, HIPAA), code of conduct, ethical labor, and environmental policies.
• Financial & Continuity Checks: Confirmation of financial health checks, and the existence and adherence to Business Continuity (BCP) and Disaster Recovery (DR) plans, including vetting of any subcontractors.
• Audit Record: Detailed fields for Comments, Audit Scope, and Conditions for Approval.

Business Use Cases

• Risk and Compliance Audit: Serves as the primary, auditable record to prove that regulatory, legal, and operational due diligence was performed before vendor approval or renewal.
• Standardized Vetting: Enforces a consistent and repeatable checklist for every vendor audit, eliminating variance and ensuring no critical steps are missed across multiple departments (Legal, IT, Procurement).
• Performance Benchmarking: Provides structured fields for assessing qualitative performance and process maturity, allowing businesses to compare vendors objectively.
• Onboarding and Approval Workflow: The explicit Status field drives the downstream workflow, allowing the vendor to move forward to contracting only once the audit is formally completed and approved (or approved with conditions).

Why This Template is Powerful

• Automated Metrics: The template automatically calculates the completion percentage for each section, transforming a passive checklist into a real-time, measurable compliance dashboard.
• Built-in Accountability: Fields for Auditor Name and Audit Date ensure a clear, traceable audit trail, verifying who conducted the review and when.
• Holistic Risk Assessment: By unifying checks across Documentation, Quality, Security, and Finance into one single record, it provides a holistic risk assessment that traditional, siloed forms cannot match.
• Actionable Findings: The dedicated section for Conditions for Approval moves the audit beyond simple pass/fail by providing a roadmap for the vendor to achieve full compliance.