Certification Grace Period

1. The overwhelming reason why customers choose a 12-month 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 12-month grace period smooths this out.  There are times when a supplier does not recertify, but our “12-month grace period” prefer taking this risk to having frequent unnecessary variations in spend.  A common best practice by many organizations with long-time, mature supplier diversity programs recognize suppliers who are actively diverse at any time during their fiscal year, regardless of whether they may have expired sometime during that fiscal year.  
2. Many certification agencies are many months behind in completing the recertification process, and suppliers with ‘expired’ certifications will eventually become certified again.  The average renewal takes 3-6 months after the expiration date.
3. 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.
4. Certification information in supplier.io’s database is updated on a monthly basis.  However, 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 certification agency updates their files available for public use, so there may be a lag time between when the supplier renewed versus when the certification agency updated their public data.