GMP & Compliance
Setting up a prerequisite program
How to create, author, and activate a prerequisite program in Crown, and what its lifecycle statuses mean.
Prerequisite programs are the standing programs that support food safety: your sanitation program, pest control, allergen control, water safety, and others. Crown keeps each one as a living document you activate, monitor against, and revise over time. They live under Documents in the main menu.
The Documents tabs
Documents has three tabs:
- Programs: your programs and their current status. This is where you work day to day.
- Catalog: the program types Crown offers as starting points.
- Monitoring log types: the kinds of monitoring you can record.
The Programs tab opens with three summary cards. Ready for an inspection shows how many of your programs are in force against your total; if you have drafts, a pill on the card lets you filter the list down to just those. Due for review shows how many programs are due or overdue, and selecting the card filters the list to those programs. Under review shows how many programs are flagged for review while still in force, and selecting it filters to them too.
Creating a program
- Start a new program
On the Programs tab, select New program. Crown creates a draft.
- Choose the program type
Pick the type this program covers: water safety, sanitation, pest control, allergen control, receiving, recall, training, or maintenance, plus an Other type for anything else. The type sets up the right monitoring and can't be changed once confirmed, so choose carefully.
- Answer the setup questions
Crown asks a few questions about how you run the program (for sanitation, how often you clean; for water, your source). These tailor the program and seed its monitoring schedule.
- Add the program content
Write the program directly in Crown, or upload an existing document. A program needs content and an effective date before it can go active. The Recall type is the one exception: its content is a structured recall plan you fill in right on the program page (recall coordinator, recall team, distribution channels, and the procedure itself) rather than free-text content. See Your recall plan for the full walkthrough.
- Activate it
Set the effective date and activate. Activation captures your e-signature.
Program statuses
A program moves through these statuses:
- Draft: being set up. Not yet in force and not counted in your compliance picture.
- Active: in force. Its monitoring schedule is live and it counts toward your compliance health.
- Under review: in force, but flagged while you decide whether to amend, retire, or keep it.
- Retired: no longer in force, kept for your records.
What's next
With a program active, you record monitoring against it. See Logging monitoring checks for sanitation, pest, and allergen programs, and Water monitoring for water safety.
Frequently asked questions
What are prerequisite programs in food safety?
Prerequisite programs are the standing, facility-wide programs that support food safety: sanitation, pest control, allergen control, water safety, and similar. They're the foundation your specific hazard controls sit on top of.
Which prerequisite programs does Crown QMS support?
Crown includes program types for water safety, sanitation, pest control, allergen control, receiving, recall, training, and maintenance, plus an Other type for anything else. You activate each one and log monitoring against it.
What is the difference between a prerequisite program and a preventive control?
A prerequisite program is a general, facility-wide good-practice program like sanitation or pest control, while a preventive control targets a specific hazard at a specific process step. In Crown, a step in your hazard analysis can be controlled by a prerequisite program instead of an individual control.