There are no expensive consultancy fees for SME Standards - no costly day rates or 'hidden extras'. You pay an annual fee for assessment and we’ll also provide: • Online guidance, examples and templates to help you prepare for assessment • Support whenever you need it • A certificate valid for 1 year • A marketing pack to help with promoting your achievement

If you want to show your customers that you have a certified management system in place and increase other benefits such as improved efficiency and cost savings, then ‘certified’ will be right for you. If you aren’t quite ready to develop a fully certified management system, or feel a simple commitment to making improvement is enough for your organisation, then ‘committed’ is a good option.

We don’t think you will as we’ve provided lots of free online guidance and you don’t need any expertise to prepare for assessment. If you do need some help, we offer unlimited support, so just get in touch and we’ll be happy to advise.

‘Committed’ can be completed in an hour or 2 and verified by us within a couple of days. Certified is pretty straightforward and a small, simple organisation could work through our guidance and be ready for assessment in a few days. Once you’ve submitted an application, assessment is usually completed within 1-2 weeks.

We charge an annual assessment fee and offer free online tools, unlimited support and a marketing pack. For ‘Committed’ the fee is £95. For ‘Certified’, how much you pay is linked to how many staff the organisation has. We offer a reduced rate for third sector organisations such as registered charities. There’s more information on the Fees page.

That’s not quite how management system Standards work. The Standards provide a framework for making plans and monitoring progress. Its up to you to decide which issues are most relevant to your organisation and take action on these. You might decide you want to recycle more if you generate a lot of waste, or maybe reducing fuel use is more important. That’s up to you.

SME Certification Centre is the inspection body for the SME Standards. We employ a network of management systems professionals as Assessors who are suitably qualified and experienced in a variety of business sectors. We have a strict set of criteria for Assessors. If you are interested in becoming an Assessor, please contact us for more information.

Yes! We just provide a framework to work to and its completely flexible. It doesn’t matter if your organisation is just you working from home or you have 100’s of staff. You'll work through the same process, but your planned actions will be bespoke and its up to you to decide what is suitable for your organisation.