Glossary
Expiry date
The date on the container or label after which a material should not be used, marking the end of the period in which it is expected to remain within its shelf-life specification under the defined storage conditions.
Why it matters on a certificate
The expiry date is the harder boundary of the two dating systems: past it, the material is outside its assured period. On a certificate the date must be present where assigned, labelled unambiguously, and consistent with the manufacturing date; an expiry date implying an implausible shelf life is a finding on its own.
A worked example
A certificate shows a manufacturing date of March and an expiry date of the previous January. Whatever the results say, the document's own dates cannot both be true, and the review raises the contradiction rather than picking a side.
Examples are synthetic and illustrative; any limits shown are not the requirements for any particular material.
The COA Validator checks the element this term describes on every certificate it reads, and reports what is present, what is missing and what does not add up.