Free Incident Register Template

A free Excel register for recording and following up every incident, injury, illness and near miss in your workplace. It captures what Queensland businesses need to keep: whether an incident was notifiable and when Workplace Health and Safety Queensland or the Electrical Safety Office was told, the WorkCover report and claim, the investigation and every corrective action through to close-out.

Use it with our Free Incident Report Form, Incident Management Policy & Procedure.

Incident register, incident log or accident register?

They are the same thing: one list of every incident, injury, illness and near miss, so nothing is missed and you can see patterns over time. This incident register template is an Excel workbook, so you can sort and filter it, and the Summary sheet counts incidents by type and works out your lost time injury frequency rate for any period.

What the law asks you to keep

A business must keep a record of each notifiable incident for at least 5 years from the day the regulator was notified (section 38 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld)). A notifiable incident is a death, a serious injury or illness, or a dangerous incident (sections 35 to 37). Keeping every incident and near miss in one register, not just the notifiable ones, makes it easier to show how you manage risks and to spot the hazards that keep coming up. Read more about notifiable incidents in Queensland.

How to use the incident register

1. Type your business details once on the Start Here sheet.
2. Record each incident using the details from the incident report form: the fields are in the same order.
3. Mark whether it was notifiable and record when the regulator and your insurer were told.
4. Rate the consequence and likelihood, record the root cause, and add the corrective actions on the linked sheet.
5. Check the Summary sheet each month and follow up overdue actions, which are highlighted in red.

What is included in our free incident register?

• A Start Here sheet: type your business details once and they appear on every sheet
• The incident register: date, location, type, people involved, injury details, treatment and days lost
• Notification and claims: notifiable incident, regulator notified, reference number, insurer report and claim number
• Investigation: consequence and likelihood ratings with an automatic risk score, and the root cause
• A linked Corrective Actions sheet with owners, due dates and overdue actions highlighted in red
• A Summary sheet: totals for any period, lost time injury frequency rate and a chart by incident type
• Drop-down lists you can change to suit your business
• A plain-English summary of the Queensland notification and record-keeping rules

What you get

• An editable Microsoft Excel workbook with no macros
• Drop-down lists, frozen headings, automatic risk scores and colour highlighting
• Room for 150 incidents and 250 corrective actions, with more rows when you need them
• Print-ready pages: the header, incident number and date repeat on every printed page
• Fields that match our free Incident Report Form, so the form and the register line up

Review it and adjust it to suit your business, your sites and the way your team works, and talk it through with your workers.

Incident register template: frequently asked questions

This is general information, not legal advice. Check the current law or talk to Workplace Health and Safety Queensland for your situation.