Compliance¶

ChillCheck makes it straightforward to demonstrate temperature compliance during environmental health inspections or food safety audits.

What inspectors typically ask for¶

Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) inspecting food businesses under the Food Safety Act 1990 and Regulation (EC) 852/2004 will commonly ask for:

A temperature monitoring record covering at least the past 3 months (often longer)
Evidence that monitoring is happening continuously, not just spot-checks
Records of any temperature excursions and what corrective action was taken
Target temperatures for each piece of refrigeration equipment

ChillCheck provides all of this automatically.

Exporting a temperature log¶

Log in to app.chillcheck.online
Go to Compliance in the navigation
Select the site and the date range (e.g. the past 3 months)
Click Export CSV

The downloaded file contains:

Column	Description
`timestamp`	Date and time of the reading (UTC)
`cabinet`	Cabinet name
`sensor_id`	Sensor identifier
`temperature_c`	Recorded temperature in °C
`target_c`	Target temperature at time of reading
`status`	`ok`, `warning`, or `critical`

Use descriptive cabinet names

The cabinet names in the export come from your dashboard settings. Names like "Display Fridge 1" or "Walk-in Chiller — Meat" are much more useful to an inspector than "Cabinet A".

Data retention¶

Plan	Retention
Starter	12 months
Pro	3 years
Enterprise	7 years

For food businesses, most EHOs ask for 3 months of records at minimum. Pro plan covers all practical compliance requirements.

Upgrade before exporting long periods

If you're on Starter and need records older than 12 months, upgrade to Pro first — records are kept in the database and become accessible immediately on upgrade.

Alert history¶

The Alerts page in the dashboard shows a complete history of temperature excursions including:

When the alert was triggered
Which cabinet and sensor
The temperature at the time
Whether it was acknowledged and by whom
When the temperature returned to normal

This audit trail demonstrates that excursions were noticed and acted upon — which is what inspectors want to see.

Corrective action notes¶

When acknowledging an alert, you can add a note explaining what action was taken (e.g. "Defrost cycle — temperature normalised within 2 hours" or "Compressor fault — engineer called, cabinet taken out of service").

These notes appear in the alert history and can be referenced during inspections.

HACCP support¶

ChillCheck's continuous monitoring and exportable records support your HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) plan, specifically the monitoring requirements at CCPs related to temperature control (typically CCP2 in food service).

For full HACCP documentation, you should also record:

Target temperatures and critical limits for each cabinet (stored in Settings → Alert Rules)
Corrective actions for each type of excursion (add these to your HACCP document, referencing ChillCheck alerts as the monitoring method)
Verification records (the weekly/monthly summary of the temperature log)

Frequently asked compliance questions¶

Is continuous electronic monitoring acceptable? : Yes. The Food Standards Agency explicitly supports electronic monitoring as an alternative to manual temperature checks, provided records are kept.

Do I still need to do manual checks? : ChillCheck replaces routine manual temperature checks. Many businesses keep a brief manual check log (e.g. once per week) as a secondary verification, but this is not legally required if you have continuous electronic monitoring.

What if there's a power cut and readings are missing? : ChillCheck logs the period of missing data. You can note in your HACCP records that monitoring was unavailable during a power outage. Adding a UPS (see hardware guide) eliminates this risk for most outages.

Can I print the temperature log? : Export the CSV and open it in Excel or Google Sheets to format it for printing. Many inspectors are happy to review records on a laptop or tablet without printing.