Key takeaways
- 1ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 — Global ACI TECH-3-004 (formerly IAF MD 5).
- 2ISO 22000 — ISO 22003-1:2022.
- 3ISO 50001 — ISO 50003:2021; ISO 22301 — ISO/IEC 17021-1:2015, clause 9.1.4.
The price of an accredited ISO certificate follows one quantity above all: audit time. Audit time is not chosen by the certification body's sales team; it is calculated from rules that accreditation bodies publish, from facts about your organisation.
That is why two honest audit-time calculations for the same organisation should land close to each other, and why a price given over the phone, before anyone knows your headcount and your sites, is a guess.
Audit time comes from the standard's own rules
Each management-system standard has its own method for calculating how many auditor-days the audit needs:
- ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 — Global ACI TECH-3-004 (formerly IAF MD 5).
- ISO 22000 — ISO 22003-1:2022.
- ISO 50001 — ISO 50003:2021; ISO 22301 — ISO/IEC 17021-1:2015, clause 9.1.4.
The inputs are facts, not negotiation: the effective number of personnel in the scope, the complexity or risk of your activities, and the number of sites.
Limits the rules place on the number
- An audit day is normally 8 hours, and a calculated result is rounded to the nearest half day (TECH-3-004).
- For ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001, reductions may not exceed 30% of the time in the standard's tables (TECH-3-004, clause 3.9).
- Where several standards are audited together, the reduction from integration may not exceed 20% (Global ACI TECH-3-008, formerly IAF MD 11). The same rule adjusts the combined time to how integrated the system is and can also increase it where the integrated audit is more complex; it is an audit-time rule, not a discount.
The cost over three years, not one
Certification runs in a three-year cycle: the initial audit in two stages, a surveillance audit in each of the next two years, and a recertification audit before the certificate expires. Each surveillance year is about one third of the initial audit time, and recertification is about two thirds of the time an initial audit would need at that point (TECH-3-004). At CAS each of these audits carries its own administrative and technical review fees as well as its man-days, and each certificate carries a certification fee every year: the full fee in the initial year of the cycle and a reduced fee in each surveillance year.
What a CAS proposal includes
Every CAS proposal is written and itemised for each audit: the administrative and technical review fees (once per audit, however many standards it covers), the audit man-days with their calculation, the certification fee for each certificate and any travel days. You can contract year by year or for the whole cycle; payment is due within 7 days of signing the agreement, or before the first audit if that is sooner, and audits are scheduled once it is received. Tickets, visas, accommodation, technical experts, translation, bank charges and VAT where it applies are not included and are stated in the proposal. CAS gives no discounts: every client invoiced by CAS pays the prices of the CAS fees policy, set by the same rules for everyone; clients of CAS offices and agencies outside Egypt pay that office's approved prices. Where travel and accommodation apply, anything CAS charges for them is invoiced in writing. You pay CAS itself — by bank transfer, cash or cheque — against an official CAS invoice and receipt; nothing is ever paid to an individual auditor or settled privately with one (see our anti-bribery policy).
Ask any certification body for its audit-time calculation. CAS provides it with every formal proposal. The full method is on our Certification fees page, and more answers are on our FAQ.
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