"ISO accredited" turns up on tenders, supplier questionnaires and a good many company websites. What is being asked for is almost always ISO certification, and there is one situation where the difference matters.
Certification applies to your organisation
ISO defines certification as the provision by an independent body of written assurance, a certificate, that the product, service or system in question meets specific requirements. That is the thing an organisation buys and holds. Your management system is what gets audited, and the certificate names the standard, the scope and the sites it covers.
The certificate comes from a certification body, and so does the mark you display alongside it. It does not come from ISO, which writes the standards and certifies nobody. That is covered in full in is there an official ISO logo.
Accreditation applies to the certification body
Accreditation sits one level up. ISO defines it as the formal recognition by an independent body, generally known as an accreditation body, that a certification body operates according to international standards.
In the UK that body is UKAS, which describes itself as the sole National Accreditation Body for the United Kingdom, appointed under the UK Accreditation Regulations 2009. UKAS assess the bodies that provide certification, not those bodies' clients. Management system certification bodies are accredited against ISO/IEC 17021-1, and what UKAS say accreditation demonstrates is that a body is technically competent to audit and certify against the relevant standards.
An organisation is certified. A certification body is accredited. That is the whole distinction.
Does the wording matter?
In conversation, no. "ISO accredited" is what most people say, and anyone working in this field knows what is meant by it.
On a tender it can matter, because the phrase hides a question that does have a real answer: does the buyer want certification from a UKAS-accredited body, or will certification from an independent body do? Those are different purchases at different prices. Where a tender or a customer questionnaire asks for "ISO 9001 accredited", the useful move is to ask which they mean before you buy anything. Often they want to see a current certificate. Sometimes they want the accredited route specifically, and they will say so when asked.
Accreditation is a claim, and claims can be checked
Two situations are worth keeping apart. A certification body that holds no accreditation and says so plainly is straightforward: you know what you are buying and you can judge whether it suits your customers. A body that displays an accreditation it does not hold is a different matter, and it is the one that costs organisations money, because the certificate gets bought, filed, and then rejected the first time a customer looks into it.
UKAS publish a page on counterfeit certificates and false claims of UKAS accreditation. They describe certificates in circulation and organisations falsely claiming accreditation or affiliation with UKAS, and they say that independently checking the authenticity of a certification is part of the procurement process. That page names the organisations concerned. It is kept by the accreditation body rather than by us, and it is the right place to look.
None of this means that accreditation from outside UKAS is questionable. Other countries have their own national accreditation bodies, and accreditation from one of them, recognised through the international arrangement between accreditation bodies, is real accreditation. The thing that carries no standing is a badge from an organisation that is not a recognised accreditation body at all. Accreditation is a word anyone can print. National accreditation is a legal appointment.
Three checks worth making
Where a body claims UKAS accreditation, UKAS's own "Who's Accredited" search settles it in a minute.
Check the scope as well as the name. An accredited body's schedule of accreditation sets out what it is accredited to certify, standard by standard, and accreditation covering one standard does not cover the rest.
To check a certificate rather than a body, UKAS run CertCheck, a free public database of accredited management system certifications. Where a body claims no accreditation, there is nothing to look up, and the questions become the ordinary ones: who carries out the audit, what the certificate covers, and whether the people asking you for it will accept it.
Which route do you need?
We are an independent certification body, and much of our work is supporting clients to UKAS-accredited certification through third-party UKAS certification bodies, so we support both routes. We are not UKAS accredited ourselves, we claim no accreditation, and we say so plainly.
ISO's own position is worth repeating here: accreditation is not compulsory, and non-accreditation does not necessarily mean the certification body is not reputable. For many organisations the independent route is the proportionate choice, and it is usually faster and lower cost. The accredited route is the right answer when a customer, a tender or a regulator specifically requires it.
Our prices are published in full on the certification costs page. If you are not sure which route you are being asked for, send us the wording and we will tell you what it means.