How to Fill In Your FCP Diary (With Examples)

The Food Control Plan diary is the part of your FCP that most businesses find tedious, and it’s also the part that verifiers look at first. If your diary is patchy, vague, or clearly backdated, you’ll hear about it at your next verification visit.

This guide walks you through what to record, how to record it, and what a properly filled-in diary actually looks like.

What the FCP Diary Is

Your FCP diary is the ongoing record that proves you’re following the procedures set out in your Food Control Plan. Under the Food Act 2014, it’s not enough to have good procedures. You have to demonstrate that you actually follow them, every day.

If you’re using MPI’s template FCP (the SSS template), the diary is structured around a set of daily checks, plus a four-weekly review. The record forms from MPI give you the basic layout, but plenty of people stare at the blank boxes and wonder what they’re supposed to write.

Here’s what goes where.

Daily Checks: What to Record

Every operating day, you need to complete checks that cover the basics of food safety in your business. For most food businesses using the SSS template, these include:

• Fridge and freezer temperatures (are they within range?)
• Food condition (does stored food look and smell right?)
• Cleaning and sanitising (have surfaces and equipment been cleaned?)
• Staff hygiene (are staff following handwashing, hair restraints, illness reporting?)
• Pest checks (any evidence of pests?)

Each check is typically a yes/no or a temperature reading, with space for notes if something is off.

Example: A Normal Day (Everything Fine)

Here’s what a filled-in daily check looks like when nothing goes wrong:

Date: 21 March 2026 Staff on shift: Sam, Tina

Check	Result	Notes
Fridge 1 temp	3.2 C	OK
Fridge 2 temp	4.1 C	OK
Freezer temp	-18.5 C	OK
Food condition	OK	All items dated and within use-by
Cleaning done	Yes	Benches, chopping boards, slicer cleaned and sanitised
Staff hygiene	Yes	All staff in clean uniforms, no illness reported
Pest evidence	None	No signs of pests

Signed: Sam T.

Nothing fancy. Short, factual entries. The point is that someone did the checks, recorded the results, and signed off.

For more detail on temperature recording specifically, see our temperature monitoring guide.

Example: A Day Where Something Goes Wrong

This is where your diary matters most. When a check fails, you need to record what happened and what you did about it. This is your corrective action.

Date: 21 March 2026 Staff on shift: Sam, Tina

Check	Result	Notes
Fridge 1 temp	7.4 C	Above range. See corrective action below.
Fridge 2 temp	4.0 C	OK
Freezer temp	-19.1 C	OK
Food condition	Checked	Items in Fridge 1 assessed (see below)
Cleaning done	Yes	All areas cleaned
Staff hygiene	Yes	No issues
Pest evidence	None

Corrective action: Fridge 1 was reading 7.4 C at 7:15am. Checked door, found it had been left slightly ajar overnight (cleaning staff hadn’t shut it properly). All items assessed using the 2-hour/4-hour rule. Cooked chicken from last night (approx. 10 hours above 5 C) discarded. Raw vegetables and sealed dairy moved to Fridge 2, all still within safe condition. Fridge door closed, temp back down to 4.8 C by 8:30am. Spoke with cleaning staff about making sure fridge doors are shut at end of night.

Signed: Sam T.

Notice the difference. The corrective action section records what went wrong, when, what you did with the food, and what you did to stop it happening again. That’s what verifiers want to see.

The Four-Weekly Review

The SSS template requires a review every four weeks (not monthly, every four weeks, so it doesn’t drift). This is a slightly bigger task than the daily checks.

In the four-weekly review, you look back over the last four weeks and check:

• Were daily checks completed every operating day?
• Were any corrective actions needed? Were they recorded properly?
• Is the plan still accurate for how the business actually operates?
• Are record forms up to date and stored properly?
• Has anything changed in the business (new equipment, new menu items, new staff)?

Example: Four-Weekly Review Entry

Review date: 21 March 2026 Period covered: 22 Feb to 21 Mar 2026 Reviewed by: Jordan M. (owner/operator)

Daily checks completed? Yes, all operating days. Business closed 4 days this period (public holiday, personal leave).

Corrective actions this period: One. Fridge 1 temp issue on 21 March (door left open). Recorded and resolved same day. No food safety incidents.

Changes to business operations? New dessert menu added 10 March. Reviewed handling and storage requirements. No change to FCP procedures needed (all items use existing processes).

Staff training? New staff member (Tina) started 1 March. Completed FCP induction training and food safety basics. Training record filed.

Plan still accurate? Yes. No changes to premises, equipment, suppliers, or processes that would require updating the plan.

Signed: Jordan M.

Keep it honest. If you missed a few days of checks, say so and explain why. A review that says “everything perfect, no issues” for months on end is just as suspicious as one with no records at all.

Common Mistakes Verifiers Flag

Having worked with plenty of food businesses preparing for verifications, these are the issues that come up again and again:

Blank days with no explanation. If your diary has gaps, your verifier will ask why. If you were closed, note that. If you simply forgot, that’s a problem. See our guide on dealing with record blanks.

Every single day is identical. If your fridge temperature reads exactly “4 degrees” every day for three months, it looks like you’re making it up. Real temperatures fluctuate. Record the actual reading.

No corrective actions, ever. As we cover in our corrective actions guide, zero corrective actions over a long period suggests you’re not catching problems rather than not having any.

Corrective actions with no detail. Writing “fridge warm, fixed it” is not enough. What was the temperature? What did you do with the food inside? How did you fix the fridge?

Four-weekly reviews not done, or clearly done in a batch. If all your reviews for the last six months are written in the same pen on the same day, it’s obvious. Do them as you go.

Records not signed. Every entry should show who did the checks. Unsigned records don’t demonstrate accountability.

Tips for Staying on Top of It

The biggest challenge with the FCP diary isn’t knowing what to write. It’s doing it consistently. A few things that help:

1. Make it part of opening routine. Temperature checks and the daily diary happen before you start prepping food. Not at the end of the day, not when you remember.
2. Keep the forms where staff can see them. If the diary is buried in an office drawer, it won’t get filled in.
3. Train every staff member, not just the manager. If only one person knows how to do the diary, what happens when they’re off sick?
4. Set a recurring reminder for the four-weekly review. Every 28 days. Put it in your phone.

If paper forms are the bottleneck, consider switching to a digital system. The Template FCP App is the platform we built specifically for NZ food businesses running FCPs. Daily checks are completed on a phone or tablet, temperatures are recorded with timestamps, and corrective actions are prompted automatically when a check fails. It doesn’t change what you need to record. It just makes it faster and harder to forget.

The Point of All This

The FCP diary isn’t busywork. It’s the evidence that your food safety system is actually running. When your verifier sits down with your records, they should see a clear, honest picture of how your business operates: routine checks done consistently, problems caught and dealt with, and a plan that reflects reality.

Get the diary right, and the rest of the verification process becomes significantly easier.