What Food Safety Records Should You Keep?

Most Australian food businesses should keep records covering temperature control (receiving, cold and hot holding, cooking, cooling and reheating), cleaning and sanitising, staff training, and any corrective action taken when something goes wrong. Under Standard 3.2.2A, higher-risk food service and catering businesses (Category One) generally must make records substantiating these controls, or otherwise demonstrate compliance to an authorised officer. Requirements vary by category and jurisdiction, so confirm what applies with your state or territory food regulator and local council. Key takeaways: Keep records that prove your critical controls work: temperature (receiving, cold/hot holding, cooking, cooling, reheating), cleaning and sanitising, staff training and corrective action.. Under Standard 3.2.2A, Category One food service and catering businesses generally must make records substantiating their prescribed activities, or otherwise demonstrate compliance to an authorised officer; Category Two businesses mainly need a Food Safety Supervisor and trained handlers.. Records can be paper or electronic, and can include data-logger downloads, photos or completed checklists — as long as they are accurate, dated and available on request.. FSANZ guidance indicates records substantiating prescribed activities should be retained for a minimum of three months; some records (training, audits, supplier approvals) are worth keeping longer, so confirm exact periods with your regulator.. A record is only useful if it shows what you did when something went wrong — always capture the corrective action, not just the out-of-range reading.. Records to keep and what to capture: Record, What to capture. Receiving — Delivery temperatures and supplier/product details (cold generally 5°C or below; frozen hard and frozen). Cold holding — Fridge, coolroom and chilled-display checks (5°C or below). Hot holding — Bain-marie and hot-display checks (60°C or above). Cooking and reheating — Core temperature of high-risk items (75°C a widely used target). Cooling — That cooked food moved through the danger zone within the required limits. Cleaning and sanitising — Schedule sign-offs, sanitiser concentration and contact time. Corrective action — What went wrong, what happened to the food, the fix, who and when. Why food safety records matter Records are how you prove your food safety controls are actually working — not just that you intend them to. When an environmental health officer (EHO) visits, or if a customer complaint or foodborne-illness investigation arises, your records are the evidence that food was received cold, cooked hot, cooled quickly and surfaces were sanitised. Without them, you are relying on staff memory, which carries little weight during an audit or investigation. Standard 3.2.2A (Food Safety Management Tools) makes this concrete for many food service, catering and related businesses. It introduces three tools: a certified Food Safety Supervisor, food handler training, and — for higher-risk (Category One) businesses — an evidence or substantiation tool. Where a Category One business carries out a prescribed activity, it generally must make a record substantiating that the activity meets the Code's requirements, unless it can show an authorised officer another way that it is meeting those requirements. Category Two businesses (for example, retailers of ready-to-eat potentially hazardous food not made on site) generally need a Food Safety Supervisor and trained handlers, but are not required to use the evidence tool. Confirm your category with your regulator, as this drives your obligations. Records demonstrate your critical controls worked — the core expectation of an audit. They protect the business if a complaint or illness investigation occurs. They help you spot trends, like a fridge that keeps drifting warm, before they become failures. They support due-diligence and can be relevant if you ever face enforcement action. Temperature records Temperature control is the single most important area to document, because most food-poisoning bacteria are controlled by keeping food out of the temperature danger zone (5°C to 60°C). Standard 3.2.2A's prescribed activities cover receiving, storing, displaying and transporting potentially hazardous food under temperature control, adequate processing (such as cooking), minimising time out of temperature control, cooling within specified limits, and rapid reheating. Your temperature records should span that whole journey, not just the fridge. FSANZ guidance indicates that records showing potentially hazardous food is kept at safe temperatures should generally be made on each day the business is engaged in prescribed activities, and should note the date (and time where appropriate) and the food or activity they relate to. A digital probe accurate to about plus or minus 1°C, kept calibrated, is what makes these readings credible. Receiving: temperature of chilled and frozen deliveries on arrival (generally 5°C or below for cold; frozen food hard/frozen). Cold holding: fridge, coolroom and display unit checks (target 5°C or below). Hot holding: bain-marie and hot display checks (target 60°C or above). Cooking and reheating: core temperature of high-risk items (75°C is a widely used simple target). Cooling: that cooked food moved through the danger zone within the required time and temperature limits. Freezer checks to confirm frozen stock stays frozen. Cleaning and sanitising records Standard 3.2.2A lists adequate cleaning and sanitising of food-contact surfaces and equipment as a prescribed activity, so a documented cleaning schedule with sign-offs is a sensible record to maintain. The record shows what is cleaned, how often, with what product, by whom, and that it was actually done. Keep the sanitiser's instructions and Safety Data Sheet (SDS) accessible too — using a food-safe sanitiser at the correct concentration and contact time is part of demonstrating the control worked. A cleaning schedule listing each item/area, frequency and method. Daily or shift sign-offs confirming cleaning was completed. The sanitiser used, its concentration and contact time. Periodic deep-clean and equipment-servicing records (e.g. extraction, coolrooms). Receiving and supplier records Recording what you receive supports both temperature control and traceability. If a product is later recalled, or a supplier is implicated in an incident, receiving records let you identify affected stock quickly. Keep enough detail to trace a product back to its supplier and forward to where it went — the general expectation captured in the Food Standards Code's traceability provisions. Delivery date, supplier and product (and batch/lot where practical). Temperature of chilled and frozen goods on arrival. Condition of packaging and any rejected or returned stock. A list of approved suppliers, so you can show you source from reputable businesses. Invoices or dockets, which double as basic traceability records. Training and supervision records Under Standard 3.2.2A, food handler training and a certified Food Safety Supervisor (FSS) are food safety management tools in their own right. Keep evidence that your people have the skills and knowledge to handle food safely — this is often the first thing an officer asks to see. An FSS certificate is generally expected to have been obtained within the previous five years to be considered current, but the exact rules on who must hold it, how it is recognised and how often it renews can vary by state and territory — confirm your local requirement. Your Food Safety Supervisor's certificate and contact details. Records of food handler training or competency (dates, topics, who attended). Evidence of induction for new staff before they handle food. Refresher training records where your program or regulator requires them. Corrective action records This is the record most businesses under-do — and the one an EHO values most. A temperature log full of readings tells only half the story; what matters is what you did when a reading was out of range. A good corrective-action record turns a failure into evidence of a system that works. For every out-of-specification event, capture what went wrong, when, what you did about the food, and what you did to stop it recurring. For example: 'Coolroom 9°C at 8am; stock moved to spare fridge, high-risk items assessed and discarded, technician called; coolroom back to 4°C by 11am.' What the problem was and when it was found. What happened to the affected food (used, reheated, discarded). The immediate fix and any follow-up (repair, retraining). Who took the action and when it was resolved. How long to keep records, and going digital FSANZ guidance for Standard 3.2.2A indicates that a record substantiating a prescribed activity should be retained for a minimum of three months once made. That is a floor for day-to-day operational logs, not a ceiling — some records (training certificates, audit reports and supplier approvals) are worth keeping longer, and some jurisdictions or your own food safety program may require more. Confirm the required periods with your state or territory regulator or council. Records can be paper or electronic — Standard 3.2.2A accepts records in various forms, and completed checklists, data-logger downloads, and even photos or video can count. Digital record-keeping (a tablet app, connected temperature probes or automatic fridge sensors) reduces missed and back-filled entries, timestamps everything, flags out-of-range readings in real time, and makes records instantly retrievable during an audit. Whatever format you choose, records must be accurate, legible, dated and available to an authorised officer on request. Keep records substantiating prescribed activities for at least three months (FSANZ guidance), or longer if your regulator or program requires. Keep training certificates, audits and supplier approvals for longer. Digital logs timestamp entries and prevent convenient back-filling. Automatic sensors can alarm before a fridge failure spoils stock. Back up electronic records so they survive a device failure. Worked examples: Recording a coolroom failure as corrective action: A morning check finds the coolroom at 9°C. Staff move stock to a spare fridge, assess and discard high-risk items, and call a technician, with the coolroom back to 4°C by 11am. The whole sequence is written down, because a temperature log full of readings only tells half the story; what you did when a reading was out of range is what an officer values most. A café's day-to-day record set: The café keeps a receiving log for delivery temperatures, fridge and display checks, cooking and cooling logs for high-risk items, and a cleaning schedule with shift sign-offs. A calibrated probe accurate to about plus or minus 1°C makes the readings credible. Records are dated, kept for at least three months and stored so they can be produced during an audit. Checklist: Receiving log capturing delivery temperatures and supplier/product details. Cold-holding checks for every fridge, coolroom and chilled display (target 5°C or below). Hot-holding checks for bain-maries and hot displays (target 60°C or above). Cooking, cooling and reheating records for high-risk items. Cleaning schedule with daily/shift sign-offs and sanitiser details. Corrective-action entries showing what was done when readings were out of range. Current Food Safety Supervisor certificate and food handler training records. Approved-supplier list and retained invoices/dockets for traceability. Probe thermometer calibrated and accurate to about plus or minus 1°C. Records dated, legible, retained for the required period (min. three months for prescribed-activity records) and available on request. Common mistakes: Recording temperatures but never noting the corrective action taken when a reading is out of range. Back-filling a week of logs from memory just before an inspection — officers can usually tell, and it undermines credibility. Keeping fridge temperatures but ignoring cooking, cooling and reheating records for high-risk food. Using an uncalibrated probe, so every recorded reading is questionable. Treating cleaning sign-offs as a formality that staff tick without actually cleaning. Storing records only on one device or in a drawer that is lost, damaged or unavailable during an audit. Assuming one national rule covers retention and who needs records, rather than checking your category and jurisdiction.