Your finished product is only ever as safe as what comes through the goods-in door. That's why supplier approval is a favourite area for auditors — and why a single lapsed certificate, sitting unnoticed in a spreadsheet, can quietly become your non-conformance.
What "approved" actually means
An approved supplier list (ASL) isn't a contacts book — it's evidence that you've assessed the risk of each supplier and hold proof they're fit to supply you. For each one that usually means a risk assessment, current certification, a completed questionnaire, agreed specifications, and a clear approval status. The standards (SALSA, BRCGS, ISO 22000) all expect it, and all expect it to be current.
The approval lifecycle
Supplier approval isn't a one-off tick — it's a cycle that runs for as long as you buy from them:
- Onboard & risk-assess. Higher-risk materials (ready-to-eat, allergen-bearing, novel) warrant more evidence than low-risk ones.
- Collect evidence. Certificates (BRCGS, SALSA, ISO 22000, FSSC 22000), a completed questionnaire, and product specifications.
- Assign a status. Approved, conditionally approved, pending, under review — so everyone knows what you can and can't buy today.
- Monitor. Track certificate expiries, refresh questionnaires on a cycle, and review after any complaint or non-conformance.
- Re-approve. Periodically, and whenever a certificate lapses or the risk changes.
The most common supplier-approval finding is a certificate that expired months ago and nobody noticed. A static spreadsheet can't warn you. The fix is to diary every certificate's expiry date and get a reminder before it lapses — not discover it when the auditor opens the folder.
Where supplier approval goes wrong
- The ASL lives in a spreadsheet that's months out of date.
- Certificates expire silently, so you're technically buying from an unapproved source.
- Questionnaires were collected once at onboarding and never refreshed.
- Approval isn't linked to the ingredients you actually receive, so an unapproved material can still be booked in.
Doing it well
Keep a single, live status for every supplier; diary certificate expiries with reminders well in advance; refresh questionnaires on a set cycle; and — the part that really protects you — link approval to the specific ingredients you buy, so the system itself stops an unapproved material slipping in at goods-in. Then keep every piece of evidence filed against the supplier, ready to show.
The bottom line
A strong approved supplier list is less a document than a living process: a clear status per supplier, certificates that warn you before they lapse, questionnaires that refresh themselves, and approval wired to the ingredients you actually buy. Get that running and the goods-in door stops being the soft spot in your food safety system.
Never miss a certificate expiry again.
See how Prodara keeps your approved supplier list audit-ready.