Submit a CAPA
A CAPA — Corrective and Preventive Action — is the most important record in your quality system. It captures what you'll change to stop a problem from happening again. ENSURE walks each CAPA through a five-step lifecycle from raise to verified closure.
The 30-second version
- Open CAPA in the sidebar → click + New CAPA
- Title, description, severity, owner, due date
- Click Create — you'll get a
CAPA-###reference - Owner is notified; CAPA moves through action plan → implementation → verification → closed
Step-by-step
Open the CAPA module
Click CAPA in the left sidebar. You'll see the list of open CAPAs with their lifecycle step, owner, due date and any overdue alerts.
CAPA
Click "+ New CAPA"
Top-right of the page. The form opens with default values pre-filled (your name as raiser, today's date, status Raised).
CAPA
Write a clear title
The title is the one thing every stakeholder will read. Aim for a short imperative phrase that says what will change:
- ✅ "Add mirror to forklift aisle 7 to fix blind spot"
- ❌ "Forklift incident"
Good titles let you scan the open-CAPA list and instantly understand what's outstanding.
Pick a category and severity
Category tells you which QHSE pillar this belongs to: Safety, Process, Compliance, Quality, Environmental.
Severity drives prioritisation and how visible the CAPA is in dashboards:
- Critical — work has to stop or significant compliance risk
- High — material risk of recurrence
- Medium — important but non-urgent
- Low — improvement opportunity
Assign an owner and due date
Pick a single owner from the dropdown — the person accountable for the action being delivered. They'll get an in-app notification plus an email the moment you save.
Due date: be realistic. Overdue CAPAs trigger an automatic reminder to the owner three days before the date and an escalation when it passes. The aim is to close on time, not to ship as many CAPAs as possible.
Describe the issue and background
Two text fields:
- Description — what the action will do, in one or two sentences
- Background — what triggered it (incident, audit finding, management decision, etc.)
If you're promoting from an incident, the link is auto-populated in Source — you don't need to re-explain the event, just link to it.
Click "Create"
The CAPA is saved instantly, gets a CAPA-### reference and lands in the list at the Raised stage. The owner is notified immediately; the CAPA appears in their "My open CAPAs" widget.
Source
CAPA Details
Risk assessment
Does a risk assessment exist for this CAPA?What happens next
- CAPA created in state Raised. Owner notified.
- Owner defines corrective + preventive actions and effectiveness criteria.
- Manager approves → Implementation → Verification → Effectiveness review → Closure.
Related Documents & Evidence
Attach relevant documents, procedures, audit reports, photos or any supporting evidence.
CAPA-### reference.What happens next
Every CAPA in ENSURE follows the same five-step lifecycle. Each step has its own form section in the detail panel — you can't move forward without completing the current one (configurable in Settings → CAPA Configuration).
Action plan: the owner writes a step-by-step plan of what they'll change. Implementation: evidence of the change being made (photos, documents, sign-offs). Verification: an approver — not the owner — confirms the action is real and effective. Closed: the CAPA is locked. An effectiveness review (default: 90 days post-closure) checks whether the change held.
Common questions
No — verification must be done by a different user. Default approver pool is HSE Managers and Admins. You can extend it in Settings → CAPA Configuration → Approval pools.
During verification, select Not effective. The CAPA reopens at the action-plan stage and the audit log captures why. You can also raise a successor CAPA linked back to this one.
The detail panel has a Documents tab. Drag-drop SOPs, training material, photos or evidence — they're stored against the CAPA and visible at every step.
ENSURE auto-flags potential repeats — when a new CAPA is created with similar wording to a closed one, you'll see a "possible repeat" banner with a link to the prior CAPA so the team can decide whether root cause was actually addressed.