Free HACCP corrective action log template
This free HACCP corrective action log template — printable PDF or editable Excel — records every failed check in one place: what went wrong, what you did immediately, what you changed so it does not recur, and who signed it off.
Free. No email address, no sign-up — the corrective action log downloads straight away.
A corrective action log is the record that turns a pile of tick sheets into a working food safety management system. Anyone can produce clean temperature logs. What an inspector is actually assessing is whether your team notices a failure and does something predictable about it.
The sheet is structured around four questions, because "sorted it" is not a corrective action. What was the failure and where was it found? What did you do to the food, right then? What is the underlying cause — a door seal, a delivery window, a training gap? And what changed as a result?
Keep it to genuine deviations: a temperature outside target, a missed check, a failed delivery, a pest sighting, an equipment breakdown, a complaint with a food safety angle. If everything goes in, nothing gets read.
The sign-off column is not bureaucracy. It is the difference between a note somebody left and a decision a manager took, and it is the first thing checked when the same fault appears three times in a quarter.
What's on the sheet
Log sheet — blank rows to fill in · Landscape A4 · PDF, Excel and CSV
Header fields
Venue / site · Period covered · Responsible manager
Columns
- Date & time — dd/mm hh:mm
- Where found — Check type or area
- What went wrong — The deviation, with the reading if there was one
- Immediate action — What happened to the food
- Root cause
- Preventive change — What is different now
- Closed? — Y / N
- Signed off by
10 blank rows per sheet.
What you get
- ✓Printable PDF, landscape A4, 10 wide entry rows
- ✓Editable Excel (.xlsx) and CSV versions
- ✓Separate immediate action, root cause and preventive change columns
- ✓Closed / signed-off columns for management review
- ✓Footer prompts to keep entries same-day and food-focused
How to use it
- 1
Keep one log per site rather than one per check type, so repeat faults are visible in one place.
- 2
Open an entry as soon as a check fails, with the date, time and where it was found.
- 3
Describe the deviation in numbers where you have them — "walk-in chill 9.4°C at 07:20" beats "fridge warm".
- 4
Record the immediate action taken on the food itself before anything else.
- 5
Write the root cause once you know it, and the preventive change that follows from it.
- 6
Have a manager sign off and mark the entry closed. Review anything still open at your next management meeting.
Questions
What counts as a corrective action?
Two things: what you did to the affected food, and what you changed so the same failure does not repeat. A reading you circled and left alone is not a corrective action.
How long should I keep corrective action records?
Keep them for at least as long as your other food safety records — commonly one to two years, depending on your jurisdiction and the shelf life of what you produce. Check your own local requirement.
Should minor issues go in the log?
Log anything that breached a control: a temperature out of range, a missed check, a rejected delivery, a pest sighting, a breakdown. Routine maintenance and general tidiness belong on a cleaning or maintenance sheet instead.
Who should sign off a corrective action?
Whoever is accountable for that control — usually the head chef or duty manager. The person who found the problem can record it, but sign-off should come from someone able to authorise the preventive change.
Or stop printing it altogether
Rotahr does this check on a phone — timestamped, with the person who did it attached, reminders when one is due, and a PDF export when somebody asks for a month of records. Same job, no folder to search through.
Templates that go with it
Fridge & freezer temperature log
This is a free fridge and freezer temperature log template you can download as a printable PDF or an editable Excel sheet — one page per week, with a row for every named unit and space for a morning and evening reading.
Cooking & cooling temperature log
This free cooking and cooling temperature log template — printable PDF or editable Excel — records the core temperature of cooked items and tracks how fast cooked food came down through the danger zone, with a column for the use-by date you assign afterwards.
Accident & incident report form
This free accident and incident report form template — printable PDF or editable Excel — records one incident per sheet: what happened, who was hurt, who saw it, what was done immediately, and what changed afterwards so it does not happen twice.
Free to print, copy and use in your venue — no attribution required. Written for an international audience: where a threshold is a widely used figure it is printed as one, but food safety and employment rules differ by country and change. Check yours before relying on this sheet.
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