Internal audit planning is one of the most important activity of internal audit process
- The Annual Internal Audit program should be released and communicated with Departments or Auditees. The frequency of Internal should be defined in procedure and according need to plan for Audits
- While selecting frequency of Internal Audits for Different departments or processes or Products, we need to consider importance of processes, their associated risks, any past experience etc. We can consider different frequencies for different processes/departments based on their risk
- Generally Internal Audits should be planned at scheduled intervals to verify that the management system fulfills requirements of QMS and that the effectiveness of the system is maintained. ‘Requirements’ comprise of the standard itself, along with the organizational requirements (such as the organization’s procedures and policies)
- Internal audits can be conducted for departments wise at different point of times, instead of covering complete organization level
- During Planning phase, the Internal Auditor need to have what criteria they will audit. This can be done with a checklist which has list of questions to be asked or checked during audit program
- An Internal Auditor can verify the documents/policies/procedures in advance and make a list of points for program. They can also verify previous internal audit reports, external audit report for the area to find out the weak areas
- The criteria for internal audits should be communicated to the auditee before audit. It is a good practice to communicate to the auditee to arrange required documents before the audit to save time