The Audit Fee, and the Cost of Being Audited

How to read this sheet

The overlap column is a judgement and the entire answer rests on it. Two programmes both covering health and safety can differ completely in depth, evidence and sampling, so the figure wanted is what a person who has read both checklists thinks is genuinely a second look - not a similarity of titles. Enter it conservatively: a supplier who overstates duplication and takes that to a customer will be corrected by somebody holding both documents. Duplication is also not automatically waste. An audit that is technically redundant may still be the thing that gets an order placed, and a customer may simply be unable to accept another scheme whatever it costs you - so the right reading of this number is what mutual recognition would be WORTH, which is where a negotiation starts rather than where it ends. Nothing here prices the risk side at all: an audit that finds something genuine before a customer does is worth more than it costs, and a programme trimmed to its cheapest configuration can be the reason a failure reaches a brand. The findings cost is the average of closing one, which is a poor description of a distribution containing both a missing signature and a fire door - if one category dominates, run those rows separately. And the whole sheet is a supplier-side view: it says nothing about whether the auditing is proportionate to the risk at this site, which is the question the customer is actually trying to answer.