How to Run a BRCGS Traceability Test Properly

By Robert Low, Lead Management System Specialist and BRCGS Approved Trainer

Traceability is a Fundamental requirement across the BRCGS family of standards, and the annual traceability test is where I see sites stumble more than almost anywhere else. Not because their systems cannot trace, but because the test is run half-heartedly, in one direction, or in a way that would never survive a real incident. Here is how to do it properly.

Both Directions, Explicitly

A complete test runs two exercises. Forwards: take a delivered batch of raw material or component and trace it through every manufacturing step, including any outsourced processing, to every finished product batch it ended up in and every customer that received them. Backwards: take a finished product batch delivered to a customer and trace it back through manufacture to every raw material and component batch it contains, with supplier details. Standards have historically described this as testing the system and vice versa, wording that in my experience confuses sites constantly, and something I raised in my Issue 5 consultation feedback. Do not let the wording confuse you: two exercises, opposite directions, both documented.

Include Mass Balance

A trace that identifies the right batches but cannot reconcile quantities is half a trace. If you received 500 kg of a material, your records should account for it: how much went into which batches, how much was rejected or wasted, how much remains in stock. Quantity reconciliation is what turns a paperwork exercise into evidence that your recall would actually capture everything.

Time It Honestly

Run the test against the clock and record the elapsed time, because speed expectations are tightening across BRCGS standards. My personal view, which I also fed back during the Issue 5 consultation, is that very short windows are arbitrary for long shelf life consumer products, and that measured year-on-year improvement is a more meaningful discipline than a stopwatch target. But whatever the final standard requires, you want to know your real number before an auditor asks for it, not discover it during an incident.

Document the Chain, Not Just the Answer

The test record should summarise every document referenced and show the links between them: goods-in record to batch record to line record to despatch note. An auditor reviewing your test wants to follow the chain themselves. If your summary is a single line saying the test passed, expect to run it again live during the audit, under time pressure, with an audience.

Include rework in at least some of your tests, because rework is where traceability quietly breaks. And if different processes on site use different traceability systems, test all of them, not just the tidy one. Traceability connects directly to your risk methodology, covered in my HARA explainer, and to the Fundamental requirements where failure carries the heaviest consequences.