CIS Auditing System

Audits, Inspections, Actions, Evidence, Scores, and Follow-Up — All in One Place

The CIS Auditing System is designed to do far more than internal audits. It can also be used for daily walk-through inspections, safety inspections, cleanliness inspections, supplier audits, process audits, food safety checks, equipment checks, and many other routine business reviews.

Instead of treating audits as paperwork that must be completed after the fact, CIS allows the audit to be planned, performed, documented, scored, assigned, followed up, and reported in real time.

When the audit is finished, the audit is truly finished.

Flexible Audit Questionnaires

CIS includes more than 25 different audit questionnaires covering a wide range of industries, departments, and processes.

These questionnaires can be used as provided, edited, simplified, expanded, or deleted if they are not applicable to your organization. You can also create your own questionnaires for specific processes such as:

• Purchasing
• Receiving
• Operations
• Warehousing
• Calibration
• Maintenance
• Food safety
• Supplier audits
• Safety walk-throughs
• Cleanliness inspections
• Process checks

Each questionnaire can be organized by section, process, department, or audit type. Questions can be added, removed, edited, or rearranged so the audit reflects how your organization actually operates.

Audit Planning and Scheduling

Once your audit questionnaires are established, CIS allows you to plan one audit or a group of repeating audits.

Audits can be scheduled as:

• One-time audits
• Daily audits
• Weekly audits
• Monthly audits
• Quarterly audits
• Yearly audits
• Custom recurring audits, such as every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

When planning an audit, you can select the audit name, audit standard, process or department, supplier if applicable, auditors, attendees, applicable procedures, and the questionnaire to be used.

CIS then manages the schedule by sending notifications, adding the audit to the applicable To Do Lists, and placing the audit on the master calendar.

Conducting the Audit

When the audit date arrives, the auditor simply opens the audit and follows the questions one by one.

For each audit question, the auditor can enter findings, comments, observations, opportunities for improvement, scores, and supporting evidence. Evidence may include uploaded documents, photographs, records, or other files.

This allows objective evidence to be captured directly during the audit instead of being collected separately afterward.

Audit Actions Created During the Audit

If an issue is found, the auditor can create an audit action directly from the audit question.

CIS automatically links the action to the specific audit and question. Much of the information from the audit question is carried into the action record, reducing duplicate entry.

The auditor can then assign the action to one or more responsible employees. Once the action is created, CIS returns the auditor to the audit so they can continue with the next question.

This means nonconformances, corrective actions, observations, and opportunities for improvement can be issued while the audit is being performed.

Lessons Learned Library

Audit questions and findings can also be added to a company-wide Lessons Learned library.

This allows employees to search past issues, findings, observations, and improvements so the organization can learn from previous audits instead of repeating the same problems.

Scoring and Audit Performance

CIS allows scores to be assigned to individual audit questions.

The system can tabulate the scores and calculate an overall average score for the audit. This provides a useful way to measure improvement over time and compare performance across departments, processes, suppliers, or audit types.

Real-Time Audit Visibility

Because CIS is a real-time system, interested parties do not have to wait for the audit to be written up after completion.

Authorized users can review audit progress while the audit is still underway. They can see questions, evidence, uploaded documents, findings, assigned actions, and audit status as the information is entered.

This is especially useful for organizations with multiple locations, remote management, or audits that take more than one day to complete.

Audit Reports and Action Tracking

CIS provides access to audit reports, audit action lists, and audit summaries.

Users can view open audit actions, responsible persons, due dates, completion status, verification status, and follow-up requirements.

Audit reports can be filtered by process, action owner, audit number, audit category, and other criteria. Reports can also be printed or exported, including audit action reports and complete audit records.

Automatic Follow-Up

Audit actions are not forgotten after the audit.

CIS places assigned actions on the responsible employee’s To Do List, sends notifications, tracks due dates, and reports late actions. Audit action due dates can also appear on the calendar and be removed when completed.

This gives management a transparent view of what is open, who is responsible, and what still requires follow-up.

Supplier Audits

CIS can also be used for supplier audits.

When a supplier is selected in an audit, audit actions can be assigned to the supplier and automatically emailed. Depending on how your organization chooses to operate, suppliers can either respond by email or be given controlled access to enter their own responses, root cause, corrective action, and completion information.

This makes CIS useful not only for internal audits, but also for supplier performance management and supplier corrective action follow-up.

Practical Uses Beyond Internal Auditing

Organizations use the CIS Auditing System for many different activities, including:

• Daily lift truck checks
• Safety walk-throughs
• Housekeeping inspections
• Cleanliness audits
• Supplier audits
• Process audits
• ISO 9001 internal audits
• AS9100 or AS9120 audits
• Food safety checks
• Maintenance inspections
• Departmental reviews

Because the system is questionnaire-based, it can be adapted to almost any recurring inspection, checklist, audit, or business review process.

The Main Benefit

The biggest advantage of the CIS Auditing System is that it eliminates the gap between performing the audit and writing up the audit.

As the auditor works through the questions, evidence is captured, scores are entered, actions are assigned, notifications are sent, and records are created.

By the time the audit is complete, the report, evidence, findings, actions, assignments, and follow-up are already in place.

This saves time, improves accountability, and gives management real-time visibility into audit performance and corrective action status.