Self-audits: prep for a carrier auditor
A self-audit is a checklist you run against your own closed claim, before a carrier or third-party auditor runs theirs. You walk a recently closed job through the same questions an auditor would as…
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What a self-audit is
A self-audit is a checklist you run against your own closed claim, before a carrier or third-party auditor runs theirs. You walk a recently closed job through the same questions an auditor would ask (is the scope signed, do the moisture logs cover every drying day, does the final invoice match the approved scope), section by section, and either check each item off or flag it. At the end you sign it, and Verinode closes it into a branded PDF you can hand to your team to fix gaps, or keep on file to show an auditor you police your own work.
Verinode does not grade the claim file for you or decide whether you pass. It gives you the checklist, tallies your own checked boxes against the pass target the template sets, and shows you exactly where the risk sits. You run the audit, you sign it, you decide what to do with what it finds.
Where to find it
Open Forms from the sidebar (/forms). Forms has three tabs rendered as a pill switcher at the top of the page: Surveys, Audits, Reviews. Click Audits. Everything on this tab is a checklist you run yourself, nobody outside your company answers it.
The header button reads + Add Audit while you're on this tab (it becomes "+ Add Survey" or "+ Add Review" on the other two tabs, so the label always matches what clicking it will do).
The Audits home: hero, Explore tiles, and history
The Audits tab reuses the same home layout as the rest of Forms, with copy that switches to audit language.
Hero panel. Before you've ever run an audit, it reads:
Audits · Find The Gaps Before The Auditor Does Conduct your first audit. An audit walks you through a closed claim the way a carrier auditor would. Each section is a checklist; pass / fail tracks against your target. Sign at the bottom and you have a branded PDF ready for the carrier or auditor file.
with a Conduct your first audit button. If you've started one but not finished it, the headline switches to "Pick up an audit you've started." with a body about resuming a draft, and the button reads Open the audit picker.
Once you've completed at least one audit, the hero fills in with your real numbers: a large pass rate percentage (the eyebrow reads "Audits · Pass Rate Across Your Runs"), a status pill next to it (Strong at 60%+, Building between 30 and 59%, Low below 30%), and two secondary tiles: Active audits (how many are currently in progress, or "none open") and Audit runs (total completed, or "none completed yet").
Explore row. Four tiles, each opens the matching list:
- Active, audits you've started but not submitted. Sub-copy reads "Run Your First Audit" when there are none, or your reply percentage once you have runs.
- Audit Runs, completed runs, with the average pass rate and how long ago the latest one landed.
- Templates, the count of audit templates in the catalog, sub-copy "Pre-Built Audit Sheets."
- Closed, historical, completed audits. Reads "Completed Audits Land Here" until you've closed your first one.
Upcoming · next 30 days and Most recent rows sit below Explore, mirroring the Surveys tab's layout. Audits are on-demand, run-when-you-need-them checklists rather than something you schedule to repeat, so this row is usually empty here; when there is nothing to show it reads the shared placeholder copy for this section of Forms.
Picking an audit template
Click + Add Audit. A modal opens titled "Run an audit":
Pick an audit to run. The completion shell guides you through every section, captures a signature, and produces a branded PDF you can hand to a carrier or auditor.
Two built-in templates are cataloged under Audits today:
- Internal Mock Audit Run Sheet, "Walk through a closed claim the way a carrier auditor would. Find the gaps before the real audit does." This is the one built for the article you're reading: it's the dry run of an actual carrier or TPA audit, section by section against a specific claim. Estimated 25 minutes. 7 sections, 23 questions, target pass 90%, signature required.
- Job Quality Audit, "Score the quality of a job, crew, or process against a rubric. Catch what slips before the carrier does." A workmanship and safety rubric, not a carrier-prep walkthrough; use this one when you're grading the work itself rather than dry-running an auditor's paperwork review. Estimated 12 minutes. 7 sections, 18 questions, target pass 85%, signature required.
Each row in the list shows the template name, its estimated minutes, its description, and a summary line: section count, question count, how many of those questions are pass/fail checks, the pass target, and whether a signature is required, for example:
7 sections · 23 questions · 19 checks · pass at 90% · signature required
Additional compliance-framework templates may also appear in this list as Verinode's audit library grows for your specialty or region; they render alongside the two built-in ones with the same summary line.
Select a template (the radio dot fills copper) and click Start audit. While it's being created the button reads "Opening…". Verinode records the audit as a new form with your company as its owner, and the completion shell opens as a slide-over on top of Forms, no page navigation.
Note
"No audit templates yet: Templates ship with the product. None are cataloged for this kind right now." is the modal's own empty state. You should not see it under normal use, since audit templates ship in the product; it's the fallback if the catalog fails to load.
Working the checklist run shell
The completion shell renders the audit's sections top to bottom, each with an uppercase section header and a hairline rule underneath, questions numbered #1, #2, and so on within the section. For the Internal Mock Audit Run Sheet, the seven sections run: Pre-audit setup, Documentation compliance, Procedural compliance, Customer communication, Billing integrity, Action items, Sign-off.
Every question shows its label, a red asterisk if it's required, and optional help text underneath in muted type explaining what the item is really asking. The control underneath depends on the question's type:
- Checkbox, the pass/fail backbone of the checklist. Unchecked reads "Mark when complete"; check it and it fills copper and reads "Confirmed." Questions like "Initial scope (estimate) is signed by the customer" and "Daily drying logs are present for every drying day" are this type.
- Text, a free-text box for open answers, placeholder "Type your answer…". Used for the claim number, the carrier or TPA name, and the two action-item prompts at the end ("Top three items to remediate before the real audit," "Anyone on the team who needs a coaching note from this").
- Rating, five numbered buttons (1 through 5) plus a fixed scale legend "1 = Poor · 5 = Excellent." The Mock Audit's exposure question ("How exposed do you feel on this claim?") carries its own help text framing the same 1–5 scale as "1 = bulletproof, 5 = expecting a fight" so read the question's help text, not just the legend, for what the numbers mean on that specific item.
- Score, a number field. The Mock Audit uses this for "Average daily moisture readings collected (count)," with a pass threshold of 3 shown beside the field ("Pass at 3"). Once you type a value, it colors and labels itself Pass (green) or Below threshold (ember-red) against that threshold live, so you see the read the moment you type it, not just at the end.
- Binary, a small set of option buttons rather than a single yes/no toggle everywhere; the default is Yes / No but a question can define its own set.
- Signature, a name field. Type your full name and Verinode timestamps it automatically; once entered, it shows underneath as "{role}: {your name} · {date and time}", for example "Project Manager: Jordan Reyes · Jul 12, 2026, 2:15 PM." The Mock Audit's sign-off question is labeled "Run by" and expects the Project Manager.
Autosave
The shell saves your answers automatically every 10 seconds while you're editing, but only when something has actually changed since the last save, so it won't fire on a form you open and leave untouched. The footer shows a live "Saved 2:15 PM" timestamp once the first autosave lands. If you close the slide-over midway through, the audit stays in Active on the Explore row and reopening it restores every answer exactly where you left it, nothing is lost between sessions.
Progress and validation
A sticky footer bar runs the width of the shell showing "X of Y answered" with a copper progress bar underneath. Click Submit audit and Verinode checks two things before it lets the audit close:
- Every required question has an answer. If any are missing, the footer reads "Answer required for N question(s) before submitting."
- If the template requires a signature, someone has to have typed a name into the signature field. If not, it reads "Sign the form before submitting."
Both checks run again on the server when you submit, using the audit's own stored question list and signature requirement, not whatever the browser last had loaded, so a client-side workaround can't slip an audit through unsigned or with required items skipped.
What happens when you submit
Submitting a self-audit writes a full response record and closes the audit: it stops appearing under Active and moves to Closed. Verinode computes your pass rate itself, server-side, from the audit's own scoring rule and your checked answers, so the number in the summary is never something the browser could inflate. For the Internal Mock Audit Run Sheet and Job Quality Audit, the rule is "checkbox count": the percentage of pass/fail checklist items you confirmed. (The 1-on-1 Performance Review template under the Reviews tab, by contrast, averages its rating questions instead, since it isn't a checklist.)
If you run the same template again later, for example next month's mock audit on a different claim, it writes a fresh history record rather than overwriting the last one, so your audit runs accumulate as a real track record over time instead of showing only your most recent result.
Signing and closing to a PDF
Once submitted, the shell replaces the form with a read-only summary:
- Audit complete, in green uppercase, at the top.
- Your pass rate as a large percentage, next to "Target 90% ·" followed by Passed (green) if you met or beat the target, or Below target (ember-red) if you didn't.
- The date and time it closed.
- An Export PDF button, with the caption "Branded with your company name and signature."
- Every question again, in its original section order, each showing the answer you gave: a rating shows "4 / 5," a score shows "3 (pass at 3, Pass)" or "2 (pass at 3, Below)," a checkbox shows "Confirmed" or "Not confirmed," a signature shows "Jordan Reyes on Jul 12, 2026," and anything left blank on a non-required question reads "Not answered."
Click Export PDF and Verinode renders a branded PDF: your company name and logo (if you've set one in your profile) at the top, the audit title, who ran it and when, every section and question with its answer, your pass rate against the target, and the signature line with the signer's name, role, and timestamp. It downloads immediately as a file named after the audit's title. Export is only available once an audit is closed; a self-audit's PDF always covers your single run (audits don't aggregate multiple respondents the way an external Survey with several replies does).
- 1Open Forms from the sidebar, click the Audits pill.
- 2Click + Add Audit, pick Internal Mock Audit Run Sheet, click Start audit.
- 3Enter the claim number and carrier, then work every checklist item section by section, confirming what's true and leaving what isn't unchecked.
- 4Note the exposure rating and the moisture-reading score honestly. These flag risk, they don't get scored against you.
- 5Fill in the two action-item questions with what needs fixing before the real audit.
- 6Sign as the Project Manager and click Submit audit.
- 7On the summary, check your pass rate against the 90% target, then click Export PDF and hand it to whoever owns remediation.
Heads up
The pass rate here is a self-assessment against your own checklist, not a Verinode judgment on whether you'd survive a real audit and not a benchmark against other operators. It's the same instrument an actual auditor is likely to use, but you're both the auditor and the subject. Be as honest checking boxes as you'd want your team to be with you.