Supplier self-assessment questionnaires (SAQ)

A supplier self-assessment questionnaire (SAQ) is the form a customer sends before they start buying from you, and again every year or two. German customers call it a Lieferantenselbstauskunft; in automotive it often follows the VDA 6.3 process audit. Whatever the name, it checks the same things: who you are, how you work, and what you can prove.

What customers ask

Most self-assessments follow the same sections, in a different order and wording for each customer:

• Company data: legal name, addresses, VAT and registration numbers, ownership, contacts, sites, employees and turnover.
• Certifications: ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001, IFS, BRCGS, FSSC 22000 and others, with certificate numbers and expiry dates.
• Quality: quality management, complaint handling, traceability, change management and subcontractors.
• Environment, labour and ethics: policies, energy and emissions, human rights, anti-corruption and a code of conduct.
• Data protection and insurance: a data protection contact and product liability insurance.
• Product questions: specifications, materials and regulatory status per product.

The facts and documents behind the answers

Nearly every answer comes from a small set of sources: your registration documents, your certificates, your policies and a few product documents. The work isn’t knowing the answers. It’s finding them again, retyping them into a new template, and making sure the certificate you quote hasn’t expired since last time.

How to fill the next one faster

1. Keep each fact once, with its source. Company data, certificate numbers and expiry dates, policy names: keep them where they are kept current, not in last year’s questionnaire.
2. Answer in the customer’s own file. Customers expect their template back, in their language. Copying between files is where mistakes come in.
3. Mark what you don’t know. If a question needs a fact you haven’t recorded, leave it blank and flag it, then add the fact so it’s answered next time.
4. Have a named person approve. Someone in your company signs off before the questionnaire leaves, with their name and the date.

How Kelpfox fills it

Upload the self-assessment as your customer sent it: Excel, Word, PDF or a portal export. Kelpfox drafts each answer from your stored facts, with the source of every answer, in the customer’s file and language. Questions your facts don’t cover stay blank and are marked “not found in your facts”. Answers that need a closer look are marked for review, and nothing leaves until someone approves it. Approved answers are remembered, so the next customer’s questionnaire starts mostly filled.

Updated October 18, 2026 · General information, not legal advice: check the current rules and your customer's own requirements.