IFS Food certification: manage and prepare your compliance day to day.

This page is for food manufacturers that are already certified or preparing for certification. It does not go back over the definition of the standard - for the general context, see IFS certification : it covers operational management : how to organise supplier and product data, automate document collection, track expiry dates and prepare audit evidence.

In short

• IFS Food certification requires you to provide dated and traceable documentary evidence on suppliers, products, controls and corrective actions.
• Five workloads account for most of the effort: supplier documents, certificates and validity, product specifications, control plan and analyses, non-conformities and action plans.
• Excel and shared folders work at the start, then reach saturation : multiple versions, untracked expiry dates, time-consuming searches.
• A centralisation platform such as Tracklab automates collection, structures data and triggers expiry alerts.
• Quality, Purchasing and Regulatory teams gain a shared evidence base, usable on audit day as well as between audits.

What IFS Food certification actually requires from your teams

The IFS Food standard (also referred to as the IFS food standard or the IFS Food norm) applies to food manufacturers that process or pack products, particularly for retailer private labels. The reference IFS standard for food is audited by an accredited certification body, which assesses both the shop floor and the company's ability to produce evidence that it is in control.

Behind this wording, four practical requirements come up systematically:

1. Have evidence for every commitment. A purchasing procedure, a risk assessment or a validation must be documented, dated, versioned and kept.
2. Control suppliers. Approval, evaluation and monitoring are based on safety, quality, legality and authenticity criteria, reviewed at least once every 12 months.
3. Keep documents in their latest version. Certificates, specifications and analyses must be up to date ; an obsolete version is a non-conformity.
4. Link documents together. From the supplier to the raw material, from the specification to the control, from receipt to the finished product: consistency must be demonstrable.

In other words, IFS Food certification is won less on how well procedures are written than on the day-to-day organisation of data. This organisation is the subject of the rest of this page. For the full process (assessment, choice of certification body, obtaining certification), see our IFS Food certification guide.

The 5 documentation workloads of IFS Food certification

Not all documentation requirements carry the same weight. Five workloads absorb most of the teams' time - and concentrate the risk of non-conformity on audit day.

This table reads like a map of priorities : the first two rows almost always concern Purchasing and Goods Receipt; the next three involve Quality, R&D and Production. A robust file is built when these five workloads support each other: a supplier, its up-to-date certification, the specification of its material, the analysis that checks it, and the record of how a deviation was handled if one was detected.

Why Excel and shared folders reach their limits

Excel and a shared folder are enough to get started. They become fragile as soon as the number of suppliers, references and documents grows.

• The version is authoritative… but which one? A workbook copied between departments, a specification sent back by a supplier without a version reference: the version gap stays invisible until the audit.
• Expiry dates do not track themselves. A certificate validity date noted in a column triggers no alert. Tracking relies on human vigilance, and therefore on memory.
• Searching takes time. Finding a specific analysis for a given batch in a shared folder takes minutes that add up with every request.
• The data is not structured. A PDF stored in a folder remains a file: its information (ingredient name, analysis date, measured value) cannot be used without manual re-keying.
• Traceability is hard to demonstrate. Linking a supplier, a material, a specification and a control means rebuilding a chain of information by hand.

These limits are not personal organisation failures: they are tool limitations. A spreadsheet is designed to calculate, not to track hundreds of expiry dates and document versions. This is exactly where a dedicated platform takes over.

How Tracklab helps you manage IFS Food certification

Tracklab is a centralised management platform for supplier and product data. It does not carry out audits and does not issue certificates: it organises the information that enables your teams to maintain compliance over time and arrive at the audit with evidence available.

Centralisation of supplier and product data

A single space brings together your suppliers, their documents, your product references, their specifications and the associated control results. Each item is linked to its supplier and product, making the chain of information readable without manual reconstruction.

Automated document collection

Instead of chasing suppliers by hand, the platform automates document requests and reminders. You define what you expect per supplier and per document type; follow-up on responses happens in the tool, not in a mailbox.

AI extraction of critical data

Documents often arrive as heterogeneous PDFs. Tracklab's AI extracts critical data - validity dates, certificate numbers, scopes covered, analysis values - to turn them into structured, usable data, without manual re-keying.

Expiry tracking and alerts

Every document with a validity period has a tracked expiry date and an alert before it expires. Tracking no longer depends on one person's memory: certificates, analyses and reviews appear with their status, their date and the actions to take.

Tracklab complements your quality approach and your ERP; it does not replace them. It does not provide regulatory monitoring, production management or inventory management: its scope is supplier and product data and keeping it up to date.

If your business is trading rather than manufacturing, IFS Broker certification has its own documentation requirements. The choice of standard itself (IFS, BRCGS or other) is covered in our comparison IFS or BRCGS. Finally, the changes in the current version are explained in our analysis of IFS version 8.

What it changes for Quality, Purchasing and Regulatory teams

Quality

Quality stops chasing documents and focuses on management: reviews, corrective actions, preparation for sensitive requirements. Evidence is centralised, its status is visible, and internal audits rely on a reliable base rather than an emergency collection.

Purchasing

Purchasing has an up-to-date view of suppliers: who is approved, on what basis, with which valid documents. The annual supplier review becomes a documented exercise rather than a reminder campaign. The supply risk linked to a non-compliant supplier can be identified upstream.

Regulatory

The Regulatory team saves time checking specifications, attestations and analyses. Information extracted from documents feeds the risk assessment and product compliance without double entry.

The common foundation

What these three teams share is a single data vocabulary : the same supplier, the same product, the same document, the same expiry date for everyone. This foundation avoids version gaps and inconsistencies between the system and reality.

Preparation checklist: points to check before the audit

• Supplier view
• List of approved suppliers consistent with actual purchases over the last 12 months.
• For each supplier: proof of approval, evaluation and date of last review.
• Supplier documents centralised by supplier, and not scattered across exchanges.

• Certificates and expiry dates
• Certificates up to date, with validity dates tracked and alerts configured.
• No certificate expired or expiring during the audit period.
• Attestations and approvals available in their latest version.

• Specifications and products
• Raw material and finished product specifications up to date, with no obsolete version in circulation.
• Consistency between the specification, the product and the associated supplier.

• Control plan and analyses
• Control plan up to date according to risk and applicable frequencies.
• Recent analysis results, linked to the product or material concerned.

• Non-conformities and actions
• Non-conformities recorded with their analysis, corrective action and owner.
• Evidence of closure and effectiveness checks available.
• Open actions identified with their deadline.

• Cross-functional consistency
• Same document version used by Purchasing, Goods Receipt, Quality and Production.
• Test sampling: a supplier → its certification → the ingredient specification → the analysis → the finished product.

Practical next steps

1. Map your five documentation workloads and identify the one that costs you the most today.
2. Measure how current your supplier documents are : how many certificates expire in the next 90 days? If the answer takes time, it is a sign of manual tracking.
3. Test the evidence chain on one supplier: status → certification → specification → analysis → product. The time it takes reveals how structured your data is.
4. Choose a tool with the right scope : centralisation of suppliers and products, automated collection, expiry tracking, AI-based use of documents.

To place these principles in a complete process, through to obtaining and renewing certification, see our IFS Food certification guide and the entry point to the topic, IFS certification.