Many certification agencies are many months behind in completing the recertification process, and suppliers with ‘expired’ certifications will eventually become certified again.
Even in instances where the agency doesn’t have a significant backlog, the renewal process often extends beyond certification expiration dates. Sometimes the supplier is late, sometime the agency review process takes longer than expected, especially for complex ownership structures.
Certification information in supplier.io’s database is updated on a periodic basis. The ‘refresh’ schedule for each agency varies based on how often the agency updates its information. There are times when a supplier that completes the recertification process on time - but before the next supplier.io database refresh – can appear as ‘expired’ in the database despite having been recertified. They would be reflected as ‘certified’ again in the system the next time the agency’s information is refreshed.
The overwhelming reason why customers choose a 365-day grace period is to avoid unnecessary variations in diverse spend that is being tracked due to a diverse supplier appearing to be uncertified for a period, only to have the spend returned to ‘certified’ status later. The 365-day grace period smooths this out. Admittedly, there are times when a supplier in the end, doesn’t get recertified, but our “365-day grace period customers” prefer taking this risk to having frequent unnecessary variations in spend.
