Determining Special Audit Duration

[Randy]

Whew, I'll go along with you then. Too bad, I'm known as a "cheap date" on my expense's, we've a pretty good policy but I don't charge "personal" stuff like snacks, water, soda's (Cream for me) or anything like that, even when travelling through airports (Admiral's Clubs have pretty good stuff or airport USO's as well). I'm an Applebee's, Texas Roadhouse, IHOP, Cheddar's and Perkin's person (unless the hotel has a good managers reception like a few Embassy's) so even my restaurant stuff is not that much (400-600 visits a year).

Might want to go CB hunting again, good luck. I don't do TS or AS (though I was asked and said NO, too much "BS" for me and IMHO too many of those don't know fecal material from Shinola having never driven a rivet, strung wire or tightened a screw themselves).

 

[Sidney Vianna]

she purchased jackfruit slices totaling about $22 and assigned it as breakfast

Jackfruit????? Holly multiculturalism gone wild, Batman.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

 

[Crimpshrine13]

Whew, I'll go along with you then. Too bad, I'm known as a "cheap date" on my expense's, we've a pretty good policy but I don't charge "personal" stuff like snacks, water, soda's (Cream for me) or anything like that, even when travelling through airports (Admiral's Clubs have pretty good stuff or airport USO's as well). I'm an Applebee's, Texas Roadhouse, IHOP, Cheddar's and Perkin's person (unless the hotel has a good managers reception like a few Embassy's) so even my restaurant stuff is not that much (400-600 visits a year).

Might want to go CB hunting again, good luck. I don't do TS or AS (though I was asked and said NO, too much "BS" for me and IMHO too many of those don't know fecal material from Shinola having never driven a rivet, strung wire or tightened a screw themselves).

Honestly, I was actually astounded by what I was finding out. No auditors we'd seen in the past 20 years ever charged us grocery bills, and all auditors we'd seen were mindful of the travel expense. This year's audit was very different. And don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that we want to go cheap, and we want to make sure that the auditors get reasonable and decent meals, but we need a commonsense and basic business ethics from auditors. I mean, when we make business trips at most companies, we're paid for daily allowances, and we make conscientious choices on what we pay. If you want to stretch out a bit more to eat something better, you pay out of pocket for the extra, but otherwise we manage to get meals within what's provided in the daily allowances. But, auditor expenses are always charged "at cost," so unless CBs don't have stringent policies and there's auditors like this lady we'd seen, they can pretty much buy whatever they want to buy and charge them on the bill. I do not know how CBs accounting system works, but they should review the travel expense at the least so they cannot do just whatever. And with this incident and last year's currency issue, I just didn't think this CB have a better control over auditors' travel expense - which I was thinking that I may be forced to look for another CB. But, I'm also interested to see the response and outcome from the claim I made to IAOB as well to see if they improve or correct the issues. We got no choice for the special audit regardless as that was what they already submitted, but ethics issues, we cannot tolerate.

 

[Golfman25]

Honestly, I was actually astounded by what I was finding out. No auditors we'd seen in the past 20 years ever charged us grocery bills, and all auditors we'd seen were mindful of the travel expense. This year's audit was very different. And don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that we want to go cheap, and we want to make sure that the auditors get reasonable and decent meals, but we need a commonsense and basic business ethics from auditors. I mean, when we make business trips at most companies, we're paid for daily allowances, and we make conscientious choices on what we pay. If you want to stretch out a bit more to eat something better, you pay out of pocket for the extra, but otherwise we manage to get meals within what's provided in the daily allowances. But, auditor expenses are always charged "at cost," so unless CBs don't have stringent policies and there's auditors like this lady we'd seen, they can pretty much buy whatever they want to buy and charge them on the bill. I do not know how CBs accounting system works, but they should review the travel expense at the least so they cannot do just whatever. And with this incident and last year's currency issue, I just didn't think this CB have a better control over auditors' travel expense - which I was thinking that I may be forced to look for another CB. But, I'm also interested to see the response and outcome from the claim I made to IAOB as well to see if they improve or correct the issues. We got no choice for the special audit regardless as that was what they already submitted, but ethics issues, we cannot tolerate.

If it is the CB I think it is, you absolutely must make a change. Your life will become so much better. We made the change after a similar audit with a load of BS findings, and our appeals went nowhere. In fact the people handling the appeal where worse than the auditor. Made the switch and the new team is 10,000 times better. They guy we have auditing even knows something about our business having working in the industry for many years. Better yet, his approach to the first audit was exceptional as it gave him time to learn about us, what we do, and how we do it.

 

[Randy]

I can't speak 1st hand about other CB's but the one I've been with for 22+ years has a fairly good daily expense rate for meals (whether the billing is inclusive or exclusive doesn't matter it's the same), and I've never hit it.

 

[Crimpshrine13]

If it is the CB I think it is, you absolutely must make a change. Your life will become so much better. We made the change after a similar audit with a load of BS findings, and our appeals went nowhere. In fact the people handling the appeal where worse than the auditor. Made the switch and the new team is 10,000 times better. They guy we have auditing even knows something about our business having working in the industry for many years. Better yet, his approach to the first audit was exceptional as it gave him time to learn about us, what we do, and how we do it.

Thanks for your input. It's helpful to make an informed decision. May I ask which CB are you currently using (or I'm not sure if this should be asked in the forum...maybe it needs to be in DM?)? It's interesting when you said that the technical committee was worse than the auditor, because although I didn't necessarily think ours was worse than the auditor (because the auditor was really bad), I thought the technical committee at our CB wasn't thoroughly reviewing what we submitted and pretty much took what the auditor was saying as is - as if they didn't want to listen to what the client had to say or maybe they were so biased that they were thinking it was another bogus complaint from incompetent auditee or something.

It's an irony that during the closing meeting, the auditor was giving the company presentation of how the CB was meeting up industry compliance standard that we should be confident that we were registered with them (apparently, IAOB gave them 2023 Gold Finalist Certification Body of the Year), but I almost said to the auditor that it means nothing if she was giving us 11 majors for no good reasons and if we couldn't close out successfully we'd be losing the certificate anyway, so the presentation really didn't mean to us.

 

[Crimpshrine13]

I can't speak 1st hand about other CB's but the one I've been with for 22+ years has a fairly good daily expense rate for meals (whether the billing is inclusive or exclusive doesn't matter it's the same), and I've never hit it.

How do they calculate it? Does your CB have rules on the daily maximum for meals or do they do daily allowance and charge you a flat rate? I guess every CB does this differently but all three CBs we used in the past was "at cost" and they pass the charge to client as is. If there any CBs out there that has clear rules about the travel expense or do daily allowance, I'd be interested in. I'd say sticking with the same CB for 22 years is a long time, and I'd assume that you are very satisfied with your CB. May I ask which CB that is (I am not sure if that question is allowed in the forum)?

 

[Golfman25]

Thanks for your input. It's helpful to make an informed decision. May I ask which CB are you currently using (or I'm not sure if this should be asked in the forum...maybe it needs to be in DM?)? It's interesting when you said that the technical committee was worse than the auditor, because although I didn't necessarily think ours was worse than the auditor (because the auditor was really bad), I thought the technical committee at our CB wasn't thoroughly reviewing what we submitted and pretty much took what the auditor was saying as is - as if they didn't want to listen to what the client had to say or maybe they were so biased that they were thinking it was another bogus complaint from incompetent auditee or something.

It's an irony that during the closing meeting, the auditor was giving the company presentation of how the CB was meeting up industry compliance standard that we should be confident that we were registered with them (apparently, IAOB gave them 2023 Gold Finalist Certification Body of the Year), but I almost said to the auditor that it means nothing if she was giving us 11 majors for no good reasons and if we couldn't close out successfully we'd be losing the certificate anyway, so the presentation really didn't mean to us.

Unfortunately our current CB doesn't do IATF (we dropped that cert at the last renewal as business changed).

But yeah, the person who handled our appeal was flat out stupid. And I have lost my patience for stupid people in business. I got nonsensical responses like when dealing with 7.5.1 re Documented information:

"Although the client is correct in the verbiage of the clause, the word “determined” is key in this clause. How is it determined which tasks require a work instruction to be necessary or not? Where in the client's procedures was it determined and documented that this particular task does not need a set of work instructions?"

So basically she want us to document when we decide we don't have to document.

Just to show you're not alone.

 

[Crimpshrine13]

Unfortunately our current CB doesn't do IATF (we dropped that cert at the last renewal as business changed).

But yeah, the person who handled our appeal was flat out stupid. And I have lost my patience for stupid people in business. I got nonsensical responses like when dealing with 7.5.1 re Documented information:

"Although the client is correct in the verbiage of the clause, the word “determined” is key in this clause. How is it determined which tasks require a work instruction to be necessary or not? Where in the client's procedures was it determined and documented that this particular task does not need a set of work instructions?"

So basically she want us to document when we decide we don't have to document.

Just to show you're not alone.

Well, that was exactly what happened to us. She was nitpicking on wording. Then she asks us what "qualify" means, and tells us to get ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Systems - Fundamentals & vocabulary book to find the definition of "qualify" which we paid $250 only to find that definition of "qualify" wasn't even listed on the book, so she was telling us a flat out lie. With her push on taking internal auditor training course, at some point, I even started thinking that maybe she was getting a kick back from AIAG. Because of this nitpicking, most of the NCs are documentation clarification and verbiage change, which we highly doubt requires 2 full days of special audit. That is why I'm not sure how much we can entertain another auditor for the special audit. This also makes us wonder the legitimacy of the "major" classification. But, their technical committee denied most of what was on the appeal, so it happened in the very similar way as yours. Too bad your CB does not do IATF, but I have to start looking for a new CB. When the trust is broken, you cannot stick with the same CB - especially if it is not only the single auditor issue, but also the management side of the issue at the CB. As they always said, you can't fix the stupid, so we have to move on with right people...

 

[Randy]

You do not need to allow her on your site, that's an absolute. You tell your CB that in writing and do it yesterday. File a complaint with the Accreditation Body. If she shows up do not let her in the door. Right off the bat unless you have a typo, 9001:2015 was the wrong reference she gave you, it's 9000:2015.

If you really want to get nasty, file a complaint to the AB she uses for her personal certification, probably ANAB addressing unprofessional conduct.

Years ago I learned that it's not so much the crime that was committed, it's how the report is written about the crime that gets then jail sentence.