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Audit Communication

Templates

Appendix E of the Code of Practice includes a script for auditors to follow when they are performing testing. On this page, we’ve provided guidelines about how auditors should communicate with us before, during, and after an audit.

Before an audit

Report providers and auditors need to agree on the scope of an audit in advance of the scheduled audit seeding month. If an audit is due to start (seed) in April, you need to agree the scope of the audit by the end of March. If you’re a technology provider and will need to ask your customers to set the auditor up with access and permissions, you might need to allow a bit of extra time between agreeing the audit scope and starting to seed.

Once you agree the audit scope, your auditor should email Tasha to confirm the scope and the scheduled audit start date. We need to know:

If any changes need to be made to your Registry records.
If you have multiple platforms, which will be audited.
Who we should contact about your audit.

During the audit: interim reports

At report reconciliation, your auditor might need to issue an interim report. When that happens, they need to share a copy of the interim report with Tasha. We need to know:

Which tests are passing, including any over/under within the thresholds of deviation.
Which tests are failing, and how badly.
As a result of the tests, which of the four COUNTER Reports have passed audit.
Whether there is any concern about the standard views.

While we have a template audit form, you might need more detail to resolve the issues identified in the interim report. To help with that, we’ll accept an interim report in any format provided the information we need is included.

After the audit: final reports

When your auditor is ready to issue a final report (pass, qualified pass, or fail), they need to share a copy of the report with Tasha. We’ll update the Registry to reflect your audit status, and ask you to check whether we need to make any other changes to your Registry records. As with an interim report, we need to know

Which tests are passing, including any over/under within the thresholds of deviation.
As a result of the tests, which of the four COUNTER Reports have passed audit (i.e. which reports are relevant to your platform).
Whether there is any concern about the standard views.

If your auditor wants to use it, they can download our template audit form here. However, we’ll accept a report in any format provided it shows the information we need.

Template Audit Report Form

Extensions

Section 9.3 of the Code of Practice sets out the extensions we can offer for audits.

You can ask for delayed seeding, to move the start date of your audit back by up to three months. To request delayed seeding, you need to email Tasha the link to your test results in the Validator, and explain your timeline for fixing the problems. With delayed seeding, an audit due to start in April would actually start in July.

After an interim report you get three months as standard to fix the problems your auditor found. You can ask for an extension to the fix period, increasing it from three to a maximum of six months. For an audit started in April, with an interim report issued in June, the regular fix period would end in September. Extended fix would mean you have until December to complete the fixes. There needs to be a valid reason for an extension, such as significant issues in the interim report: not being able to schedule development time does not count.

Remember that it’s your responsibility as the report provider to ask for an extension, not the auditor’s. We can grant up to one extension of each type for any single audit, and we track extensions in the Registry.