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
- On the Temperature log tab, choose a quick range (
24h,7d,30d) or click Custom to enter specific dates, and optionally filter to a single cabinet - Click Export CSV
The downloaded file contains:
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
Date/Time (UTC) |
Date and time of the reading |
Cabinet |
Cabinet name |
Temperature (°C) |
Recorded temperature |
Status |
ok, warning, or critical |
Target (°C) |
Target temperature for the cabinet |
Warn Low / Warn High (°C) |
Warning band — readings outside this trigger a warning alert |
Crit Low / Crit High (°C) |
Critical band — readings outside this trigger a critical alert |
Source |
sensor (automatic) or manual (staff-entered) |
Method |
probe or visual — only present on manual readings |
Notes |
Optional note entered with a manual reading |
Up to 50,000 rows per export. For longer windows, run two exports back-to-back.
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".
Exporting an alerts log¶
Inspectors increasingly want to see not just the temperature record but also evidence that excursions were noticed and acted on. ChillCheck captures a root cause and optional action note on every acknowledged alert. To export this:
- Go to Compliance in the navigation
- On the Temperature log tab, choose the quick range or Custom dates you want
- Switch to the Audit trail tab
- Click Export alerts CSV (the range you picked carries over)
The downloaded file contains:
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
Triggered (UTC) |
When the alert fired |
Site / Cabinet |
Location |
Type |
high_temp, low_temp, sensor_offline, device_offline, low_battery, low_signal |
Severity |
warning or critical |
Temperature (C) |
Reading that triggered the alert (where applicable) |
Message |
Human-readable summary |
Resolved (UTC) |
When temperature returned to normal |
Acknowledged (UTC) |
When a team member acknowledged the alert |
Acknowledged By |
Name of the team member |
Root Cause |
Categorised cause (e.g. "Door left open", "Defrost cycle") |
Acknowledgment Note |
Free-text note describing the action taken |
Food Safe |
Yes or No — whether food was determined to be safe (blank if not recorded) |
Food Discarded |
Yes or No — whether food was discarded as a result (blank if not recorded) |
Discarded Qty (kg) |
Quantity of food discarded in kilograms (blank if not entered) |
Discarded Cost (GBP) |
Estimated value of discarded food in pounds (blank if not entered) |
Action Taken |
Description of what was done to address the excursion |
Decided By |
Name or role of the person who made the food safety decision |
This is the document to bring to an inspection. It tells the full story: an excursion was detected, who responded, why it happened, what they did about it, and whether food safety was maintained.
Data retention¶
All ChillCheck accounts retain temperature readings, alerts, and audit log entries for 3 years from the date each record was created. This applies regardless of whether you add or remove sites during that period.
For food businesses, most EHOs ask for a minimum of 3 months of records. ChillCheck's 3-year retention comfortably exceeds that and covers the majority of due diligence requirements in the UK hospitality sector.
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 records¶
When acknowledging an alert, you choose a root cause from a predefined list (door left open, power outage, defrost cycle, compressor fault, door seal failure, overstocked, sensor placement, sensor fault, false alarm, other) and can add an optional note.
You can also complete a Food Safety Outcome — an optional HACCP corrective action form that captures:
- Was food safe? — whether the food in the affected cabinet was checked and found safe
- Food discarded — whether unsafe food had to be thrown away, with optional quantity (kg) and estimated cost (£)
- Action taken — what was done to resolve the issue and prevent recurrence
- Decided by — who assessed the situation
These fields are optional. Acknowledging without completing them works exactly as before. But completing them creates a formal corrective action record in line with HACCP requirements — particularly useful for critical-temp breaches where food safety needs to be documented.
All of these fields — root cause, note, and food safety outcome — appear on the alert card, in the cabinet's alert history, and in the alerts CSV export, so the complete corrective-action record is easy to produce during an inspection.
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.
What if the broadband drops but the Pi stays powered? : The hub buffers temperature readings locally and uploads them once the connection is restored, preserving the compliance record with the original measurement timestamps. If a fridge breached its thresholds during the outage, the alert is raised on reconnect and stamped at the time the breach actually occurred — not when the cloud noticed. The alert email and SMS include "(detected after Xm offline period)" so it's clear the alert was retrospective. Very short outages (under 5 minutes) skip retrospective alerts because they're usually noise; outages over an hour upgrade any warning-band breaches to critical.
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.
Is there an automatic monthly summary? : Yes. On the 1st of each month, ChillCheck emails your account owner a compliance summary covering the previous month — per-cabinet reading counts, in-range %, critical breach count, alert count, acknowledgment count, and manual check count. No login required; it arrives in their inbox automatically. For a full data export, use the Compliance page CSV download.