Findings
A finding is what an audit turned up: a thing that was not as it should be, written down against the unit that answers for it.
Findings are raised during fieldwork, either from a question on the checklist or on their own. What happens to them afterwards is decided at the audit's closure approval β not in the field.
The declaration, not the recordβ
This is the module's central idea, and the one worth reading twice.
An auditor who finds something out of order knows what needs doing. But opening a corrective record there and then commits the audited unit before anyone has agreed the finding is fair β and once opened, a DΔ°F cannot be taken back without leaving a cancelled row behind it.
So a finding does not open records. It declares them.
Each declaration says:
- Kind β a DΔ°F in the CAPA module, or an action under the finding itself.
- What is to be done β carried over verbatim as the opened record's name.
- Description.
- Responsible β who will carry it. An action requires one; a DΔ°F may be left for the CAPA flow to assign.
- Due date β left empty, the finding's own due date is used.
At closure approval the approver reads every finding's demands together, strikes out what does not belong, and has the rest open in one move.
The two kinds differ in weight, not in nature. A DΔ°F is a full corrective record with its own investigation and its own flow. An action is one thing somebody does by a date.
Once a declaration has been openedβ
A declaration that has become a real record can no longer be edited or struck out. That is the line between a demand still up for discussion and one that is now somebody's work.
It applies to the finding as a whole: a finding with an opened record cannot be deleted, and the fields its record was built from cannot be changed underneath it. The screen stops offering the buttons rather than refusing the save afterwards.
Finding types decide what is obligedβ
A finding carries a finding type β "Major non-conformity", "Minor non-conformity", "Observation", "Opportunity for improvement". The type is what decides whether the finding has to declare anything.
| The type says | Then the finding |
|---|---|
| DΔ°F required | must declare a DΔ°F |
| Action required | must declare an action |
| Either | must declare one of the two, the choice left to the auditor |
| Neither | may not declare anything |
| Inherit | takes whatever the audit type decided |
Inherit or narrow, never widenβ
The same setting exists on the audit type. A finding type either stays silent β Inherit β or narrows what the audit type allows. No layer can widen what the layer above it set.
An audit type that says "neither" cannot have a finding type under it that demands a DΔ°F. The audit's own policy wins.
The findings grid tells you where you standβ
An audit cannot go to closure approval while a finding that is obliged to declare something has not. Rather than refuse with one line and leave the auditor hunting, the findings grid shows, for every finding:
- Policy β what this finding's type obliges.
- Declared β what it has actually declared.
- Ready for approval β whether the two agree.
The same check runs on the server when the audit is sent on, so the grid is a convenience, not the rule.
Blocking closureβ
A finding type can be marked as blocking closure. An audit with an open finding of such a type cannot be closed at all, whatever its declarations say β the finding itself has to be dealt with first.
The recordβ
- Code β issued from the code template, or typed.
- Name and description.
- Audit β the audit that raised it.
- Finding type β see above.
- Management system clause β which clause of which standard was not met, where that applies.
- Question β if the finding came from a checklist question, the question's key and its text, copied at the time. See Scoring.
- Responsible organization unit β who answers for it. Taken from the audit's audited unit when the form does not say otherwise, and never left empty: it is who the finding's records are addressed to.
- Responsible user β the person, where one is named.
- Due date β defaulted from the finding type's own due-days setting.
- Declared records β the declarations above.
- Attachments β the evidence: the photograph, the record that was missing, the document that said otherwise. What makes a finding arguable rather than an assertion.