Audit Planning

Planning and Audit on the Grove Platform

Once the (potential) Certificate Holder has submitted a scope to the Grove platform, the audit can be planned by the auditor or coordinator. 

Article Information

Audience Certification Bodies
Category Audit Planning
Purpose Planning and submitting an audit guide

Creating a new audit

To plan a new audit go to the Grove Home page and scroll down.

Under Evaluation by Certification Body fill in: 

  • Program: Certification

  • Organisation: The organisation for which you conduct the audit.

Click ‘Next’. 

Selecting audit scope

You are now presented with the Evaluation by Certification Body overview. 

Here, you select the audit scope(s) by ticking the box for the ingredient(s) in the audit scope. 

Then click ‘Next’. 

Please note that each ingredient has a separate scope form, so please make sure you select all the ingredient scope forms in the scope of the audit. 

If there are no scopes in this overview, this means that the (potential) CH has not uploaded their scope(s) correctly. Please ask the company to do so, before planning your audit in the system. 

Once you have selected the scope, the audit planning will appear. 

Click on ‘View planning record’ on the left. 

The audit has now been created.

To verify if the correct scopes are attached to the audit planning, next to the Details button, select ‘Scopes’.  

You will now see an overview of all the scopes. 

To see only the ones that are attached to your current audit, press button ‘Show only scopes attached to this planning’. 

Reviewing audit scope

To review if the scope(s) are completed, please click on each scope under the Scope Name header. 

Here, please carefully review whether the following sections are correctly completed for each scope:

Natural Material

  • Ingredient: The ingredient name, plant part, and state.

  • Type of production system: Either cultivated or wild-harvested.

  • Ingredient state: Either fresh, dried, or essential oil.

Additional information

  • Organisation at Source (OaS): The organisation that cultivates or collects the ingredient.

  • BAP associated?: This box should be ticked if there is an approved BAP by UEBT for this ingredient.

Certification

  • Plan to certify/verify this scope? This box should be ticked.

  • Year of audit: The year in which the audit was conducted. 

  • Type of Certification: One of the following options:

    1) UEBT Ingredient (Botanicals) Certification, 

    2) UEBT RA (Herbs and Spices – Identity Preserved) or 

    3) UEBT RA (Herbs and Spices – Segregated) 

  • Regenerative add-on: This box should be ticked if the audit is for a UEBT or UEBT/RA regenerative certification audit.

  • Number of sub-suppliers

  • Number of farms

  • Number of farmers

  • Number of workers

Harvesting 

  • Size of sourcing area (Ha)

  • Estimation of yield (tonnes/Ha)

  • Conversion rate – plant to natural raw material: The percentage should be entered as a number. For example, for 50%, enter 50; for 0.005%, enter 0.005.

  • Fresh ingredient to certify (tonnes)

  • Volume of fresh plant this year

  • Volume of fresh plant last year

  • Volume sold as certified (in the previous year)

  • Volume to be included in the certificate

Request scope update

Only if changes to the scope are needed, please go to the top and press the ‘Request More Information’ button. 

A field appears in which you can leave comments to request changes to the scope form from the CH. 

If no changes are needed, you can skip this step. 

Please bear in mind that in the months following the launch of the new platform, notifications may not be automatically sent yet. In this case, please send an email to the CH directly to request the changes. 

Audit Details

In the audit Details section, please fill in:

Dates

  • Evaluation start date: Audit start date.

  • Evaluation end date: Audit end date.

  • Evaluation start date confirmed: Tick this box if the start date has been confirmed. The CH will then receive an automatic notification that the audit date has been confirmed. 

    Please bear in mind that in the months following the launch of the new platform, notifications may not be automatically sent yet. 

     

Team

  • CB coordinator

  • CB reviewer

  • Lead auditor

     

Only if appliable:

  • Second auditor

  • Third auditor

  • Trainee auditor / Observer

Submit audit planning

Once you have reviewed the scope and completed the audit details above, under the audit Details, go to ‘Status’ field and select ‘UEBT Review’. 

You have now submitted your audit planning for review by UEBT.

Please bear in mind that in the months following the launch of the new platform, notifications may not be automatically sent yet. In this case, please send an email to certification@uebt.org directly to notify the UEBT certification team that a new audit planning has been submitted for review. 

Request for changes

After you have submitted the audit planning, UEBT reviews it and adds the relevant checklists for your evaluation. 

When changes to the audit planning are needed, you will receive a notification from UEBT on the platform or via email. If the audit planning is returned to you in status:

 

  • Incomplete, this means that not all required fields have been completed. 

  • Rejected, this means that not all information is correctly filled in. 

 

Audit planning approval

If all information is correctly filled in, the certification team will approve the planning. 

You can consult the current status of the audit planning on the Homepage of the Grove platform. 

Once approved, you can consult the checklists to be evaluated under ‘Evaluations’ and complete the audit report.  

For guidance on how to complete and submit the audit report, please visit the Audit Report Submission guidance.