How We Review Experts

1 What the badge means

A "Vetted Expert" badge means a person at Squarespell worked through a nine-point checklist against this provider's public evidence, on a stated date, and recorded the result. The date is shown on the badge so you can judge how current it is.

The checklist is the one published in the listing standards, and every item has to be ticked. The system will not record an approval while any of them is outstanding, and it will not record one without a review date.

2 What the badge does not mean

It is not a guarantee. Squarespell does not guarantee project quality, pricing, availability, timelines or outcomes, and has not audited anybody's finances, insurance or contracts.

You contract directly with the expert. Squarespell is not a party to that agreement, does not hold your money, does not act as an escrow, and takes no fee from the introduction.

A review is a check on evidence at a point in time. It is a reason to take somebody seriously, not a substitute for your own due diligence, ask for references, agree scope in writing, and pay in stages.

3 How long a review lasts

A review is valid for twelve months from the date it was carried out. After that the badge disappears automatically and does not come back until an administrator repeats the review and records a new date.

A profile whose review has lapsed stays visible and says so plainly. The expert has done nothing wrong; our information is simply out of date, and saying that is more useful to you than quietly removing them or quietly leaving the badge up.

4 How the directory is ordered

The default order uses: any explicit editorial order an administrator has set; how well the provider matches the platform and services you filtered for; whether their review is current; how complete their profile is; how recently they were reviewed; and finally their name, so equal entries do not shuffle between visits.

Payment is not on that list. The ordering function is handed an allow-list of the fields it may read and the commercial fields are not on it, so a paid relationship cannot influence position even by accident. An automated test proves it by scoring the directory twice, once with every commercial field set to its most valuable value, and requiring an identical order.