Sustainability evidence checklist template

The checklist covers the items buyers request most often: the original request document itself, a named owner for the response, your environmental policy, energy data (bills or meter records), any supplier code you apply, your modern slavery position, training records, and a running set of review notes. Not every item applies to every business — mark items as not applicable with a one-line reason rather than deleting them, so the next request starts from a complete picture.

For each item record who owns it, when it was last checked, why it is relevant to the current request, and a clear decision about whether it supports the response you are about to send. This turns a pile of documents into a defensible evidence base: when a buyer asks why you claimed something, the checklist shows which document backs it and who reviewed it.

The main value of the checklist appears on the second questionnaire. Most customer requests overlap heavily, so a maintained checklist means each new request starts from evidence that is already gathered, owned, and dated — you only need to review what has changed since the last response.