Two problems that look like one
Run a kitchen in Houston and half your line may prefer Spanish. Run one in Monterrey and the health inspector works from a different rulebook altogether. Both teams need a checklist "in Spanish", but they need very different checklists.
Most tools treat this as a translation problem: take the English form, translate the words, done. That gets the first case half right and the second case wrong. So we changed how our template library works. There are now two separate ideas:
- Language — who fills the checklist in.
- Country — whose rules the checklist follows.
Every template, in English and Spanish, with the same questions
Each of our 65 templates now comes in English and Spanish, and both versions ask exactly the same questions in the same order, with the same answer types and the same required fields. You choose the language when you create a checklist from a template, so the kitchen crew can work from the Spanish version while the office uses the English one, and both produce records that line up question for question.
The two versions are not a word-for-word conversion. Each one is written for the people reading it, in the terms they actually use. A US store checklist talks about the register and taking the trash out; the Mexican version talks about la caja and sacar la basura.
The language changes; the rules do not
Here is the part a translation tool gets wrong. When a template follows US rules, the Spanish version keeps the US rules.
Our FDA cold-holding log in Spanish still says 41 °F, not a converted 5 °C. The thermometer in a US walk-in reads Fahrenheit, the FDA Food Code is written in Fahrenheit, and the inspector will check against 41 °F. A worker filling in the log in Spanish should be held to exactly the same line as a colleague filling it in in English.
The same goes for our HUD NSPIRE, OSHA and ADA templates: Spanish wording, US requirements.
Each country gets its own checklists
Some routines simply are not the same on both sides of the border. Where the questions depend on the law, we now ship one template per country instead of one that fits neither.
Food safety. Alongside our FDA Food Code kit, there is now a NOM-251 kit for restaurants, food trucks and central kitchens in Mexico, built on NOM-251-SSA1-2009. The numbers are different: refrigeration at 7 °C or below rather than 41 °F, hot food held above 60 °C, reheating to at least 74 °C. And some requirements exist only in Mexico, like a daily record of free residual chlorine in the water.
Hiring. A new hire's first week in the US means Form I-9 within its deadlines and a W-4. In Mexico it means a written employment contract, CURP, RFC and social security number, and registering the employee with IMSS within five business days. Same purpose, completely different paperwork, so there are now two onboarding templates.
Vehicles. A US pre-trip check looks at registration, proof of insurance, the driver's license or CDL and the previous driver's inspection report, in miles and gallons. The Mexican one checks the tarjeta de circulación, the insurance policy, the emissions sticker and the jack and lug wrench, in kilometers and liters.
Workplace safety. Our OSHA audit has a Mexican counterpart based on the STPS standards, and the forklift check follows NOM-006-STPS-2023, which requires an inspection at the start of every shift by a trained, authorized operator.
Rental housing. HUD NSPIRE has no Mexican equivalent, so instead of a copy we wrote what landlords in Mexico actually deal with: gas water heaters and carbon monoxide, roof waterproofing, the rooftop water tank and cistern, checks after an earthquake, and a move-in inventory that records meter readings and the security deposit.
Where to find them
- US templates: OSHA, the FDA Food Code, HUD NSPIRE and more.
- Mexican templates: NOM-251 and the STPS standards (page in Spanish).
- General templates: store opening and closing, safety walk-throughs, inventory counts and other routines that work anywhere.
Every regulatory template is a starting point, not legal advice: check it against the rules that apply to your site, then adapt it. If your team works in a country or language we do not cover yet, tell us. That is how we decide what to build next.