About us
Certificate Verification Policy
A certificate that cannot be independently verified is not doing its job. Ours can be checked by anyone, without permission from the certificate holder.
Anyone may verify a certificate
Verification is open to any party — a customer, a tendering authority, a regulator, an insurer or a member of the public. No authorisation from the certified organisation is required, and we do not notify them that a verification was requested.
This is deliberate. A certificate exists to give third parties confidence. A certificate that can only be checked by asking its holder is not performing that function, and a certification body that restricts verification has misunderstood what it is selling.
What verification confirms
- Whether the certificate number corresponds to a certificate we issued
- The exact legal name of the certified organisation
- The standard and version certified
- The certified scope statement, verbatim as it appears on the certificate
- The sites covered by the certification
- Current status: valid, suspended, withdrawn or expired
- Issue date, current cycle expiry date, and the accreditation under which it was issued
What verification does not tell you
Suspended and withdrawn certificates
Where a certificate has been suspended or withdrawn, verification will say so and give the effective date. We do not remove withdrawn certificates from verification silently, because a party who received a copy of a certificate needs to be able to discover that it is no longer valid.
A certified organisation whose certificate is suspended must stop all use of the certification mark and all claims of certification for the duration of the suspension. Continued use during suspension is grounds for withdrawal.
Reporting a suspected false certificate
Falsified certificates exist, and they are usually detected at verification. If a certificate purporting to be issued by GMSCPL does not verify, tell us — send the certificate number and, if possible, a copy. We investigate every report.
- A certificate number that does not exist in our records
- Details that do not match the record — organisation name, scope, standard or dates
- An accreditation mark applied to a certificate issued outside that accreditation scope
- A management system certification mark applied to a product or its packaging
- A certificate presented after suspension or withdrawal
Misuse of our mark or of an accreditation symbol is pursued, including with the relevant accreditation body. It damages every organisation holding a genuine certificate.
Verify now
Have a certificate number? Check its status, scope and validity.
Verify a certificateOr report a suspected false certificate directly:
- Emailadmin@gmscpl.com
- Phone+91-XXXXXXXXXX
Common questions
Verification — common questions
Three years from the certification decision date, conditional on successful surveillance audits at approximately twelve and twenty-four months. It is not a three-year certificate you can put in a drawer; missing a surveillance audit puts it at risk of suspension.
Every GMSCPL certificate carries a unique certificate number and can be verified through the certificate verification page on this site, or by contacting us directly. Anyone may verify a certificate; no authorisation from the certified organisation is required, because a certificate that cannot be independently checked is not doing its job.
It means the certification body itself has been assessed by a national accreditation body against ISO/IEC 17021-1, and that the accreditation body is a signatory to the IAF Multilateral Recognition Arrangement. That MLA signature is the mechanism by which a certificate issued in India is recognised elsewhere. A certificate without accreditation from an MLA signatory is a private document — it may look identical and many customers will not accept it.
No. A management system certificate certifies your system, not your product, and applying the mark to a product or its packaging implies product certification. You may use it on letterheads, websites, brochures, vehicles and business cards, alongside your certificate number and the scope. Our Certification Marks Usage Guidelines set out the rules in full and are available in Downloads.
Question not answered here? Ask a certification specialist — we answer technical questions without requiring an enquiry first.
Next step
Ready to get certified?
Talk to our certification specialists. We will scope it honestly, show you the audit-day calculation, and tell you if the timeline you need is not realistic.