ROS (report of survey Note: Budget and finance.)

ROS is the abbreviation for report of survey. The NATO glossary of acronyms and abbreviations lists it as a NATO abbreviation in the Budget and finance category, with the French equivalent procès-verbal de vérification rapport d'expertise. The entry appears in the NATO glossary AAP-15.

In practice, NATO financial audit material uses a Report of Survey in connection with the write-off of NATO-funded assets, including equipment and vehicles. The document supports a decision to remove an item from the asset records, and the audit examines whether the write-off was properly handled and whether the report was appropriately approved.

What the glossary says about ROS

The glossary gives the exact form "ROS: report of survey." It sits under budget and finance, not under operations, logistics or contracting. That placement tells you the term belongs to financial administration and asset accountability.

• Expansion: report of survey
• NATO category: Budget and finance
• French equivalent: procès-verbal de vérification rapport d'expertise
• Source type: NATO abbreviation

How NATO audits use a Report of Survey

The NATO audit of the Allied Command Operations financial statements for 2015 uses both the full expression "Report of Survey" and the abbreviation "ROS." In that material, a Report of Survey is tied to the write-off of NATO-funded assets. Auditors looked at whether particular items had properly been treated as write-offs and whether the ROS behind each one had been approved correctly. The full text is in the NATO 2015 ACO financial audit.

Approval is therefore part of the process. A Report of Survey is not only a description of an asset's condition. It is a record that has to be authorized before the write-off it supports is treated as valid.

Examples reported in the NATO audit

The audit material reports specific cases that show the scale of items covered by a Report of Survey. One case involved a Report of Survey for the proposed write-off of 387 transformer line items valued at EUR 7,670,413. Another involved a Report of Survey used to write off 12 mine-resistant vehicles. Both are described in the NATO audit document.

These examples show that the term covers both large batches of inventory lines and individual high-value vehicles.

What ROS means for a supplier bidding on Canadian public contracts

The NATO sources present a Report of Survey as an internal asset-accountability record linked to write-offs. They do not describe it as a document that a supplier prepares or submits. They also do not tie ROS to a Canadian solicitation type, contract clause or supplier obligation.

A bid team that sees "ROS" in NATO-related financial or audit material should read it as "report of survey" and understand that it relates to how NATO-funded equipment is written off. For any Canadian opportunity, rely on the requirements stated in the solicitation documents themselves, which are published through CanadaBuys. If a tender document uses the abbreviation, the document's own definition governs.