What should an audit-ready test and tag report contain?

At a minimum, electrical testing records should identify who carried out the test, when it was performed, the outcome and when the next test is due. A useful audit-ready report goes further: it makes those records easy to trace to individual assets, locations and failed-item actions, so a reviewer can establish what was tested and what happened next.

Source: SafeWork NSW — Electrical inspection and testing

That difference matters. A tag proves that something happened to an item. A proper register lets you prove the electrical-safety program behind it.

What information is legally required in a test and tag record?

SafeWork NSW states that a test record must specify:

• the name of the person who carried out the testing;
• the testing date;
• the outcome;
• the date the next test must be carried out.

The record must generally be retained until the equipment is next tested, permanently removed from the workplace or disposed of.

Source: SafeWork NSW — Electrical inspection and testing

SafeWork SA requires the same four categories of information — the tester's name, testing date, outcome and next-testing date — and notes that the record may be held as a tag, logbook, register or computerised database.

Source: SafeWork SA — Inspection and testing of electrical equipment

Those are the regulatory essentials — not necessarily everything a facilities, WHS or procurement team will want from a provider.

What makes a test and tag report easier to audit?

A strong operational report should let someone who was not present on testing day work out exactly what happened.

That generally means being able to identify:

• the asset — what equipment was tested;
• the location — where it was at the time of testing;
• the result — pass or fail;
• the testing event — when it was tested and by whom;
• the next action — when it is due again, or what happened because it failed.

This is where individual asset records become useful. They turn a collection of tags into a searchable compliance history.

Should every tested item have an individual asset record?

For businesses managing more than a handful of appliances, individual records make the compliance program significantly easier to manage.

A useful asset-level register can include:

• unique asset or tag identifier;
• equipment description;
• site and location;
• equipment class where relevant;
• visual inspection result;
• electrical testing result;
• overall pass/fail;
• test date;
• next-test date.

PlanetSafe's reporting uses individual asset records rather than recording only a site-level result. This is a PlanetSafe reporting feature. It should not be presented as though every one of these fields is a universal statutory minimum.

How PlanetSafe records each tested asset →

What should happen when an item fails?

A failed item should not disappear into the same list as everything that passed.

WorkSafe Queensland says equipment that fails testing should be taken out of use and marked so people are warned not to use it.

Source: WorkSafe Queensland — Testing and tagging electrical equipment

On construction and demolition sites, SafeWork SA's record guidance also includes a register of faulty equipment showing service or corrective action.

Source: SafeWork SA — Inspection and testing of electrical equipment

For practical reporting, a failure record should make the exception visible:

• which item failed;
• where it was;
• the reason it failed, where captured;
• when the failure was identified;
• what action followed.

That gives a manager something more useful than a pass percentage. It shows whether the risk was controlled.

Does an audit-ready report need a full equipment register?

For construction and demolition work, SafeWork SA identifies an equipment register, formal inspection and testing records, a repair register and faulty-equipment corrective-action records as information that should be available for audit.

Source: SafeWork SA — Inspection and testing of electrical equipment

For other workplaces, the exact record-keeping requirement depends on the legislation and operating environment.

Even where a detailed asset register is not the statutory minimum, maintaining one avoids a very practical problem: reconciling physical tags, invoices and old PDFs when somebody asks what happened to a particular item.

How long should test and tag records be kept?

For the WHS testing records described by SafeWork NSW and SafeWork SA, records must generally be retained until the next test, or until the equipment is permanently removed from the workplace or disposed of.

Sources: SafeWork NSW — Electrical inspection and testing · SafeWork SA — Inspection and testing of electrical equipment

Construction requirements can be different. SafeWork NSW says inspection and testing records for construction and demolition equipment should be kept for the duration of the job. SafeWork SA separately requires construction-site RCD test results to be kept for a minimum of five years, excluding the daily push-button test for portable RCDs.

Sources: SafeWork NSW — Construction and demolition electrical practices · SafeWork SA — Inspection and testing of electrical equipment

There is a difference between minimum retention and useful historical retention. A multi-site business may choose to keep longer histories for internal audit trails, incident review or trend analysis. That is an organisational decision, not something that should be described as a universal AS/NZS 3760 requirement.

What should a multi-site compliance report look like?

A portfolio report has to work at two levels. Site managers need to know what happened at their location. Head office needs to know whether the portfolio as a whole is current.

That usually means keeping the asset records separated cleanly by site while standardising the format across the organisation.

Useful portfolio views can include:

• site;
• testing date;
• next scheduled cycle;
• number of assets tested;
• failures or exceptions;
• outstanding corrective actions.

The underlying records should still remain traceable to the individual site and asset.

Facility Management →

Multi-site test and tag reporting →

Is the physical test tag enough?

A tag can satisfy an important record-keeping role, and regulators explicitly recognise tags as one possible form of testing record.

Source: SafeWork NSW — Electrical inspection and testing

But a physical tag has obvious limits for a business managing hundreds or thousands of assets. It cannot easily answer:

• Which sites have testing due next month?
• How many items failed during the last cycle?
• Was a failed item repaired or replaced?
• Which assets belong to a particular location?
• Can procurement retrieve the full testing history without visiting the site?

That is why a structured digital register is valuable even where the tag itself contains the required minimum information.

What does PlanetSafe provide after a visit?

PlanetSafe's reporting is built around two levels of evidence:

1. The site-level compliance record — the overall testing engagement and its key details.
2. The asset-level register — individual tested items, with location, result and retest information.

PlanetSafe delivers a digital compliance report after each visit and tracks the next testing cycle. The reporting page shows the structure of that output.

The structure of a PlanetSafe report →

Electrical Test & Tag →

See the report before choosing the provider

See PlanetSafe's reporting approach and sample output →

See a sample report → · Explore the Customer Portal demo ↗

Choosing a national test and tag provider →

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Authoritative sources

• SafeWork NSW — Electrical inspection and testing
• SafeWork SA — Inspection and testing of electrical equipment
• WorkSafe Queensland — Testing and tagging electrical equipment
• SafeWork NSW — Construction and demolition electrical practices

Keep reading.

Last updated: August 2026