Preparing for Your First Chain of Custody Audit: A Practical Checklist

Your first Chain of Custody audit can feel like a lot of unknowns at once. Having sat on both sides of the table — building systems for clients and understanding what certification bodies are actually looking for — here’s a practical checklist to work through beforehand.

1. Know your scope

Be clear on exactly which products, sites and material categories are within your certification scope. A mismatch between what’s certified and what’s actually being sold as certified is one of the most common — and most avoidable — findings.

2. Have your procedures written down

Verbal understanding isn’t enough. Your certification body will expect to see documented procedures covering purchasing, goods-in, production/transformation, sales and outward invoicing, and record-keeping — with version control showing they’re current.

3. Check your paperwork actually matches your claims

Pull a sample of recent purchase orders, delivery notes, production records and sales invoices yourself before the audit does. Do the certified claims on outgoing documents genuinely trace back to certified inputs? This is the single most common area auditors probe first.

4. Make sure your team can explain the system, not just follow it

Auditors typically interview staff on the shop floor or in goods-in, not just management. If the person receiving deliveries can’t explain how they identify and record certified material, that’s a finding — even if the paperwork elsewhere is perfect.

5. Review your volume/percentage claims

If you’re using a percentage or credit-based claim system (rather than 100% physical segregation), make sure your calculations are current, documented, and reconcile with what you’ve actually purchased and sold in the period.

6. Check your labelling and on-product claims

Any FSC or PEFC logo use, claim wording, or licence number shown on products, packaging, or promotional material needs to match what your certificate and scheme rules actually permit — this is a frequent, easily-fixed finding if caught early.

7. Do a mock internal audit

Even a half-day internal walk-through, using the certification standard as your checklist, tends to surface the same gaps a real auditor would find — while you still have time to fix them.

What happens if something’s wrong

Most non-conformities are minor and simply require a corrective action plan with a deadline — it’s rarely the end of the process. The organisations that struggle are usually the ones facing the same finding repeated year after year, which suggests the underlying system (not just the paperwork) needs attention.

Want a second pair of eyes before your audit? Get in touch →