{"id":4543,"date":"2026-09-19T14:06:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T06:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hfcnsourcing.com\/?p=4543"},"modified":"2026-11-05T16:17:45","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T08:17:45","slug":"factory-audit-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/factory-audit-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Factory Audit in China: What One Day on Site Actually Buys You"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>\n@media (max-width:640px){\n  .hf-blog-main-card{min-width:0;max-width:100%;flex:1 1 auto}\n  .hf-blog-body,.hf-blog-layout{min-width:0}\n  .wp-block-table{display:block;overflow-x:auto;-webkit-overflow-scrolling:touch}\n  .wp-block-table table{min-width:560px;font-size:12px;line-height:1.45}\n  .wp-block-table th,.wp-block-table td{padding:6px 8px}\n}\n<\/style>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Most buyers open with the price. It&#8217;s worth flipping the order and asking what you&#8217;re actually trying to rule out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the worry is that the company doesn&#8217;t exist, a <a href=\"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/how-to-check-a-chinese-companys-business-license\/\">business license check<\/a> settles it and nobody needs to fly anywhere. If the worry is that this shipment won&#8217;t come out right, what you want is a <a href=\"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/pre-shipment-inspection-in-china\/\">pre-shipment inspection<\/a>, not an audit. A factory audit in China only starts earning its fee when the question becomes whether this factory can carry your volume for the next twelve months. Buyers collapse those three into one all the time, and the money lands in the wrong place \u2014 some pay a few hundred dollars to audit a plant that never needed auditing, others sign on the strength of a license check and find out at the loading dock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What it can and cannot tell you<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A factory audit returns a judgement with defined limits. It looks at capability, systems and headroom \u2014 whether this plant can turn out your product consistently. It will not hand you a score you can compare across suppliers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whether this particular batch is any good is an inspection question. Whether the company will cheat you is a registry question. Whether it will still be trading next year, nobody can answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A common shape: license in order, business scope matches, registered capital of RMB 8 million, nothing wrong on paper. Then you stand on the floor and learn that the critical process runs in somebody else&#8217;s plant and this one only does final assembly. The license told no lies. You read &#8220;this company exists&#8221; as &#8220;this company can make my product.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Audit, inspection, company check \u2014 three different jobs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><thead><tr><th><\/th><th>When<\/th><th>What it looks at<\/th><th>Rough cost<\/th><th>Turnaround<\/th><\/tr><\/thead><tbody><tr><td>Company check<\/td><td>The week you get the business card<\/td><td>License, business scope, registered address, litigation, operating status<\/td><td>Free, or a few dollars<\/td><td>Same day<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>Factory audit<\/td><td>Around sampling, before the order<\/td><td>Lines, equipment, warehouse, QC system, capacity calculation<\/td><td>A few hundred dollars<\/td><td>One day on site, report in 3\u20135 working days<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>Inspection<\/td><td>During production, before shipment<\/td><td>Quantity, appearance, function, packaging of this batch<\/td><td>A few hundred per man-day<\/td><td>Same day on site, report in 24\u201348 hours<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The three sit in wildly different price brackets and solve unrelated problems. The registry check is cheapest, and all it buys is confirmation that the company exists. The audit costs the most, and it&#8217;s the only one of the three that tells you in advance whether the factory can carry you. There&#8217;s a step buyers routinely skip: they audit first and check the license afterwards, when it should be the other way round. The license takes three minutes. Find a trading address or an operating anomaly and you&#8217;ve saved yourself the whole day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The week before<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The audit starts at a desk a week out, not at the factory gate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Book 3\u20135 days ahead. Confirm not just the time but the name and mobile number of your contact, and the factory&#8217;s actual address \u2014 not the office address. Plenty of trading companies register in a city-centre office and manufacture in a town 40 km away; get the address wrong and the day is gone in traffic. Ask for 4 documents at the same time: business license, product catalogue, certificates, company profile. Certificates need two checks, the expiry date and the number against the issuing body&#8217;s own register. Fakes and expired certificates are common enough, and either one lands in the fatal category of the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Build a question list in 6 blocks \u2014 capacity, quality, lead time, payment, tooling, IP \u2014 3\u20135 questions each. Without a list, payment and tooling are what get dropped, and they&#8217;re the two most expensive things to drop. Then the route. Factories across the Pearl River Delta are spread out: group by city, half a day for the ones in town, a full day for anything cross-city, 90 minutes to 2 hours per factory and 30\u201360 minutes between them. Huiyang and Zhongkai look close on a map and eat half a day each way. Get the order wrong and you&#8217;ll see one factory instead of three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How the day gets spent<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On-site time is a budget. One auditor, one factory, one day: a bit over 4 hours of actual work, and the rest goes to travel, introductions and the tea before you leave. How those four hours get divided decides how much the report can actually say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>15 minutes, showroom.<\/strong> Walk through, don&#8217;t sit down. Lights bright, shelves full, samples flawless \u2014 this is the least informative stretch of the day, because the showroom is the part the factory wants you to remember. Your job here is to get out of it, not to form a view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" src=\"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/02-showroom.webp\" alt=\"a showroom displaying ceramic planters under spotlights, the part of a factory visit that carries the least information\" class=\"wp-image-6461\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/02-showroom.webp 1200w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/02-showroom-300x169.webp 300w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/02-showroom-1024x576.webp 1024w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/02-showroom-768x432.webp 768w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/02-showroom-18x10.webp 18w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first red flag usually shows up in the same place. They keep you in the showroom and the &#8220;model workshop&#8221; \u2014 the immaculate space with new machines and busy workers. Mention that you&#8217;d like to see the real line, the warehouse, the QC room, and the talk turns to scheduling, safety rules, and how they&#8217;re rushing an order back there. That isn&#8217;t a scheduling problem. One sentence is enough: &#8220;We mainly need the production floor, at least an hour.&#8221; Watch what happens next. If it holds, carry on. If it doesn&#8217;t, the rest of the day is better spent on the next factory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Then 90 minutes on the floor, doing one thing: counting.<\/strong> Let them talk; you count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They say 10 lines and 200 workers. Count the lines that are running \u2014 a hardware stamping plant in Chang&#8217;an, Dongguan, will claim 10, and 3 will be moving while the other 7 sit under a layer of dust on the guide rails. Count the workers who are actually working, not the ones standing nearby. Then check whether the workers know who your contact is; if they don&#8217;t, they were brought in for the visit. On equipment, look at brand and age. Used imports and new domestic machines are not the same animal, but age matters more \u2014 a 15-year-old press will run, and the yield will drift. The year is on the nameplate. Get down and read it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s a faster read: what the running lines are making. If every line is on a different category, your product is probably a side job or outsourced outright. Factories with a core category keep their lines concentrated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The reverse holds too. A floor that&#8217;s too clean is its own warning. Spotless concrete, brand-new tools, no work in progress \u2014 real production doesn&#8217;t look like that. Oil, scuff marks, raw material stacked waist-high and half-finished units are the normal state. When it looks unnaturally clean, ask whether the line is down today. The answer is usually interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" src=\"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/03-empty-hall.webp\" alt=\"an empty factory hall with overhead cranes and yellow floor markings, no production lines running\" class=\"wp-image-6462\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/03-empty-hall.webp 1200w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/03-empty-hall-300x169.webp 300w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/03-empty-hall-1024x576.webp 1024w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/03-empty-hall-768x432.webp 768w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/03-empty-hall-18x10.webp 18w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>40 minutes in the warehouse.<\/strong> A production floor can be tidied in a day. A warehouse can&#8217;t, which is why it&#8217;s the more trustworthy of the two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Three areas: raw material, finished goods, returns. Full raw material and full finished goods means orders are moving. Empty raw material, empty finished goods and idle lines mean the plant is less busy than it claims. Being walked only through finished goods, with raw material and returns off limits, is the third red flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" src=\"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/04-warehouse.webp\" alt=\"a factory warehouse aisle with racking holding metal parts and cartons on pallets\" class=\"wp-image-6463\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/04-warehouse.webp 1200w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/04-warehouse-300x169.webp 300w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/04-warehouse-1024x576.webp 1024w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/04-warehouse-768x432.webp 768w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/04-warehouse-18x10.webp 18w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The returns area deserves two minutes. A small-appliance plant in Cixi with last season&#8217;s warranty units stacked in the corner \u2014 collapsed cartons, cracked faceplates, no segregation, no labels, a metre from goods waiting to ship \u2014 tells you two things at once: the defect rate isn&#8217;t low, and nobody is managing it. Cartons are worth handling too. Pick one up, squeeze it, check the grammage and the number of plies. A lighting factory in Guzhen, Zhongshan, will use 3-ply or 5-ply, and that single choice decides how many of your outer cartons arrive collapsed. 30 seconds against a few thousand dollars. We go deeper on the category specifics in the <a href=\"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/lighting-factory-audit-in-china\/\">Zhongshan lighting audit<\/a> piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" src=\"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/05-corrugated.webp\" alt=\"a stack of corrugated board seen edge-on, showing the plies in each sheet\" class=\"wp-image-6464\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/05-corrugated.webp 1200w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/05-corrugated-300x169.webp 300w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/05-corrugated-1024x576.webp 1024w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/05-corrugated-768x432.webp 768w, https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/05-corrugated-18x10.webp 18w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>An hour for documents and the QC room.<\/strong> Back in the meeting room, put the license against what you verified before the visit: company name, unified social credit code, business scope, registered address. Any mismatch needs an answer. Check the certificates again, this time against the issuing body \u2014 some are issued by an &#8220;international certification centre&#8221; whose name appears in no accreditation register anywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The QC room is the test of whether a quality system exists. Testing equipment on display proves nothing; the records are what count. Filled in on the day, or written up in a batch afterwards? Continuous, or with gaps? A toy factory in Chenghai had two facing pages in identical handwriting, three months apart. That&#8217;s a record completed in one sitting. Gaps and backfilling mean the process is for show. Then defective units: segregated, labelled, logged? Mixed in with good stock, and the QC process has already failed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Save the last hour for questions. Don&#8217;t cut it.<\/strong> By this point it should be clear that the questions are where the real distance gets covered. Everything you&#8217;ve seen is what they were willing to show you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Don&#8217;t ask &#8220;what&#8217;s your capacity&#8221; or &#8220;how&#8217;s your quality&#8221; \u2014 any factory can invent an answer. Do three things instead: ask the same question from three angles and see whether the answers line up; ask for numbers rather than adjectives; ask what happened on past orders rather than what will happen on yours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A piece of arithmetic worth carrying. A factory claims 1 million units a month, then mentions 50 workers on the floor. One million divided by 50 is 20,000 units per worker per month. At 26 days and 8 hours a day, that&#8217;s 96 units an hour \u2014 one unit every 37 seconds, one person, start to finish. For most consumer products that doesn&#8217;t hold. A factory can invent one number. It can&#8217;t invent a set of numbers that survive being multiplied together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Three questions buyers forget: the real lead time, as opposed to the promised one; who owns the tooling; what happens if delivery slips. All three only start to matter after the deposit has cleared, and by then it&#8217;s late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Man-days, money, and the report<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The unit is the man-day: one auditor, one day on site. A normal factory is one man-day. A large site, several workshops, or a social-compliance add-on runs to two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On price, factory audits in China vary a lot, and the gap is mostly about who you hire. Local inspection firms are the cheapest. Established third parties sit in the middle, and their quote usually covers basic travel. The big international names \u2014 SGS, BV, T\u00dcV \u2014 don&#8217;t publish rates at all and quote by project; they cost noticeably more, and they make sense when the report has to satisfy a customer or a marketplace. For a single factory, the total lands in the hundreds of dollars rather than the thousands. Cross-city travel, a rush job, bilingual minutes: ask, because it moves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Turnaround is 3\u20135 working days. Reshoots, certificate verification, or waiting on documents from the factory can push it past a week. Build that into your order plan \u2014 audit first, then place the order, and you&#8217;ve moved your own lead time back a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Eight things belong in the report, and if any of them is missing, ask why:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The legal entity and the license cross-check<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Timestamped photographs covering the floor, the warehouse, the QC room and equipment nameplates<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Lines actually running and workers actually present \u2014 not the factory&#8217;s own figures<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Equipment list with years of manufacture<\/li>\n\n\n<li>The capacity calculation, not just its conclusion<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Every certificate&#8217;s number, expiry and issuing body, with the register check<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Non-conformities graded fatal, major and minor<\/li>\n\n\n<li>The auditor&#8217;s name and firm<\/li>\n\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Open the report at the non-conformities and leave the score alone. The gap between 85 and 90 means nothing, but a single line \u2014 &#8220;no first-article sign-off on a critical process&#8221; \u2014 can end a factory that scored 92.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why we don&#8217;t audit in-house<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The inspector on site is a third party. We don&#8217;t run audits ourselves. You can find your own, or we can introduce one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finding your own keeps the relationship direct and the payment obvious, at the cost of doing the screening yourself: has this person worked your category, does the report hold up, have they dealt with this factory before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If we introduce someone, the screening is ours. We look at three things \u2014 how many factories in your category they&#8217;ve covered, whether they&#8217;ll share a redacted sample report, and whether the firm is accredited to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iso.org\/standard\/17020\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ISO\/IEC 17020<\/a>. Accreditation registers are public, so you can check that yourself. If the person we suggest isn&#8217;t right for your product, we find another. That part of the work doesn&#8217;t land on you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Once the report comes back from a factory audit in China, read it yourself or send it over and we&#8217;ll go through it together. Which findings are fatal, which are only sloppy paperwork, which need to become contract clauses on the next order \u2014 those calls are hard to make from the text alone and much easier after you&#8217;ve seen a few dozen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the report comes back thin \u2014 photographs missing where photographs were required, non-conformities left vague, a conclusion that doesn&#8217;t match what was on the floor \u2014 we go back to the inspector with you and stay on it until the evidence is on the page. We made the introduction; we see it through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then there&#8217;s the step most buyers skip. The report arrives, the order goes out, and not one finding makes it into the contract. Fatal and major findings should turn into something specific: a pre-production sample sign-off, a first-article approval, an extra inspection before the balance payment. We work through that with you and put it into the PI or an addendum. That&#8217;s when the audit fee finishes its job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One thing worth confirming on your own: who pays the auditor. The cleanest arrangement is the buyer paying the inspector or the firm directly, with the factory never touching the money. Once the fee runs through the factory, the report changes character. It&#8217;s a fair question to ask outright \u2014 is this invoiced to us, or to the factory?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">When not to spend the money<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the specification isn&#8217;t settled, a factory audit has nothing to measure against. No standard means the auditor can only hand you a report saying the factory seems broadly fine, which is worth nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If all you want is confirmation that the company exists, skip it. License, operating status, litigation \u2014 all free on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gsxt.gov.cn\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System<\/a>, 30 minutes of work. A few hundred dollars and a flight buys the same answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If a factory has supplied you for 3 years and one batch went wrong, what you need is an inspection and a root-cause conversation, not an audit. An audit measures capability; it doesn&#8217;t explain why this batch failed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One more distinction that gets blurred: an audit is a snapshot. It doesn&#8217;t replace day-to-day follow-up. For a long-term supplier you want both, an audit and recurring inspections. Either one on its own leaves a gap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Questions we get asked<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Can one trip cover the audit and the inspection?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No \u2014 they sit at different points in the timeline. The audit belongs before the order, around sampling, and asks whether the plant can make your product consistently. The inspection belongs during production or before shipment, and asks whether this batch is right. Run both in one day and both suffer: two hours on the floor won&#8217;t show an auditor a system, and half a day in the office leaves an inspector short of samples. Combining them means adding man-days, which usually costs more than two separate visits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How long is an audit good for?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Twelve months is the convention. That number doesn&#8217;t come from a standard; it comes from how often things change. Lines added or removed, a key manager replaced, the order mix shifting \u2014 any one of those and the old report needs rereading. Fast-moving and seasonal categories are worth an annual pass. Stable ones can stretch to two years, provided inspections cover the gap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Won&#8217;t the factory just prepare for the visit?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, and that isn&#8217;t cheating. Booking 3\u20135 days out is standard practice, and turning up unannounced just means the person in charge isn&#8217;t there. So what the audit really measures is the level a factory reaches when it tries, not its ordinary state. A plant that can&#8217;t produce a convincing prepared version has told you something. The warehouse and the returns area are the exception \u2014 a day&#8217;s notice doesn&#8217;t fix either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The report says &#8220;passed&#8221; \u2014 can I place the order?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Passed&#8221; carries almost no information. The report is a snapshot of one day, not a warranty. Read three things: how the non-conformities were graded, whether anything fatal was downgraded to major, and whether the sampling scope and the basis for each judgement are stated. A report that says the factory is broadly sound and cooperation is recommended has said nothing at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What&#8217;s the difference between an inspector I find and one you introduce?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The cost is much the same. The difference is who screens and who follows up. On your own, you&#8217;re judging whether the person is any good and you&#8217;re reading the report unassisted. Through us, we screen, we sit down with the report afterwards, and if it comes back thin we take it back to the inspector with you. Which findings are fatal, which are stylistic, which need to end up in the contract \u2014 that&#8217;s the conversation. You&#8217;re welcome to read it alone too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Can the factory pay for the audit?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s negotiable, and I&#8217;d advise against it. A factory audit the factory pays for is a factory audit the factory owns. Once the factory pays, the report&#8217;s purpose shifts: it becomes material the factory shows the next buyer rather than the basis for your decision. Some will offer \u2014 &#8220;we&#8217;ll cover it, come and look&#8221; \u2014 which sounds generous and deserves a question. Who owns the report, can you take it with you, and will the non-conformities be written up straight?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you have two or three candidate factories in front of you, the fastest next step isn&#8217;t a flight. Ask each of them for three things: a scan of the business license, the certificate numbers, and shipping records for the last 3 months, customer names removed. You can check the first two yourself, and the third tells you whether they&#8217;re busy. A factory that can&#8217;t produce shipping records probably isn&#8217;t worth the trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you do decide to audit, settle the specification and the pass criteria first, then find the auditor. Reverse that order and what comes back reads like an impression rather than an assessment. For the wider picture of what we handle, the <a href=\"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/services\/\">services page<\/a> is the place to start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">More on factory verification<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/lighting-factory-audit-in-china\/\">Lighting factory audit in Zhongshan<\/a> &mdash; what a Zhongshan lighting audit actually tests<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/how-to-check-a-chinese-companys-business-license\/\">Checking a Chinese business licence<\/a> &mdash; five steps to verify a licence before you pay<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Also worth reading:<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/pre-shipment-inspection-in-china\/\">Pre-shipment inspection<\/a> &mdash; what we check before your balance payment leaves.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most buyers open with the price. It&#8217;s worth flipping the order and asking what you&#8217;re actually trying to rule out. If the worry is that the company doesn&#8217;t exist, a business license check settles it and nobody needs to fly anywhere. If the worry is that this shipment won&#8217;t come out right, what you want [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6460,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_xspeed_no_cache":false,"_xspeed_expiry_hours":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-procurement-stories"],"acf":{"hf_keyword_sentences":"A factory audit returns a judgement with defined limits., The license told no lies., Let them talk; you count., Gaps and backfilling mean the process is for show., Open the report at the non-conformities and leave the score alone., We made the introduction; we see it through.","\u586b\u5199\u8981\u53d1\u5149\u7684\u5b8c\u6574\u53e5\u5b50\uff0c\u7528\u82f1\u6587\u9017\u53f7\u5206\u9694\uff0c\u4f8b\u5982\uff1awe_never_charge_hidden_fees_quality_is_our_priority":"","hf_keyword_words":"factory audit in China, red flag, first-article, grammage, returns area","\u586b\u5199\u8981\u53d1\u5149\u7684\u5355\u4e2a\u8bcd\u8bed\uff0c\u7528\u82f1\u6587\u9017\u53f7\u5206\u9694\uff0c\u4f8b\u5982\uff1afactory_verification_deposit_safety_business_license":""},"views":19,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4543"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6466,"href":"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4543\/revisions\/6466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hongfengsourcing.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}