Quality & Continuous Improvement

Supplier Approval: A Practical Guide

By Claudia · · 6 min read

Supplier approval: a practical guide

Supplier approval: a practical guide

Supplier approval is one of the pillars of the quality system in any food-sector company. Yet many quality managers still run this process with scattered spreadsheets, uncontrolled email threads, and criteria that vary depending on who does the evaluation. This practical guide walks through the whole cycle: what it really means to approve a supplier, what documentation to request, how to structure scoring, and how to automate the process so it doesn't depend on anyone's memory.

What supplier approval means — and why adding a supplier to your ERP isn't enough

Approving suppliers means verifying, before the first purchase and on an ongoing basis, that a supplier meets the technical, legal, and quality requirements your company demands. It is not the same as adding them as a supplier in your ERP. Creating the record in your management system only opens an administrative entry: it enables issuing purchase orders and invoices. Approval, by contrast, is a structured evaluation process that determines whether that supplier is fit to supply raw materials, ingredients, or food-contact materials.

The distinction matters because regulation doesn't settle for a tidy supplier file. As set out in Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 on general food law (Regulation [EC] 178/2002, 2002), food business operators must be able to guarantee traceability at every stage of the food chain. That means knowing exactly who you buy from, what certifications they hold, and under what conditions they operate.

What's more, a supplier added without real approval creates an invisible risk: they can clear accounting checks and pass every filter in the purchasing department, yet still introduce a microbiological, chemical, or documentary hazard that goes undetected until a serious issue occurs. Approval turns that risk into something measurable and manageable.

What documentation and evidence to request before accepting a new supplier

The approval process starts with gathering documentation before authorizing the first delivery. The exact list depends on the type of supplier (raw materials, packaging, services), but there's a common documentary core every quality manager should require:

  • Certificate of analysis or technical product specifications for the supplied item, with agreed parameters and acceptable limits.
  • Valid management system certifications: ISO 22000, BRCGS, IFS, or FSSC 22000 (ISO, n.d.), depending on the supplier's risk level.
  • Sanitary registration number and, where applicable, establishment authorization.
  • Allergen declaration and product composition when dealing with ingredients or food-contact materials.
  • Public liability insurance with sufficient coverage for the type of supply.
  • Self-assessment questionnaire completed by the supplier, declaring their hygiene practices, process control, and issue management.

A good practice is to gather all this information in a standardized approval record that captures both the supplier's details and the initial evaluation result. This record should have an expiry date and an assigned owner responsible for periodic review. Without that expiry control, last year's documentation can stay active without anyone noticing.

If you want to dig deeper into how to plan the verification visit, check out our guide on quality supplier audits.

How to score and re-evaluate suppliers without losing history in a spreadsheet

Once the initial documentation is complete, the next step is assigning an objective score that lets you classify the supplier and make decisions: approved, conditionally approved, or rejected. For the approval process to be genuinely useful, the scoring system must be reproducible — two different evaluators should reach similar results for the same supplier.

The most common criteria include:

  • Certification level and scope of the certificate.
  • Self-assessment questionnaire result.
  • History of issues and complaints against the supplier in prior periods.
  • Compliance with delivery times and specifications on recent orders.
  • Results of audits carried out by your team or by third parties.

The real problem shows up during periodic re-evaluation. Most companies set an annual cadence, but in practice the spreadsheet gets updated late, the history of past scores gets lost, or nobody remembers which supplier is due for review until a non-conformity shows up. History is key: it lets you spot deteriorating trends before they turn into problems.

To avoid these failures, re-evaluation should be tied to automatic alerts and an immutable log that preserves every version of the record. Read more on how to avoid failures caused by a weak evaluation in our article on supplier quality control.

How to automate the approval process and expiry alerts in Solved

Automating the approval process isn't a luxury reserved for large corporations. It's the only way to guarantee the system works systematically, without relying on manual reminders or on whoever handles suppliers being in the office that day.

In Solved, the supplier management module centralizes the whole cycle in a single platform:

  • Digital approval record: each supplier has a structured record where required documentation is attached, evaluation criteria are logged, and the final score is calculated automatically based on the weight assigned to each criterion.
  • Expiry alerts: Solved automatically notifies you when a certificate is about to expire or when a supplier's periodic re-evaluation is coming up. No need to manually check any spreadsheet.
  • Traceable history: every status change, new score, and attached document is logged with date and user, letting you audit the process with no extra effort.
  • Integration with issues and complaints: non-conformities linked to a supplier automatically feed into their re-evaluation score, so the history reflects operational reality, not just paperwork.
  • Automatic classification and blocking: if a supplier falls below the minimum score or their certificate expires without renewal, the system can mark them as unfit and block new orders from being generated for them.

The result is an approval process that meets regulatory requirements, cuts the time spent on document management, and gives the quality manager a real-time view of the status of the entire supplier portfolio. When an internal or external audit comes around, the information is available instantly, organized, and with a complete history.

Approving suppliers rigorously isn't bureaucracy — it's the foundation your product safety and customer trust rest on. With the right tools, the process stops being an administrative burden and becomes a real competitive advantage.

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