The simple answer is “as soon as possible”. Regardless of the Administration your ships are registered with, or if your Administration has delegated to a RSO, the number of ships to be verified is far in excess of the number of qualified auditors to conduct the verifications. If every ship requires verification in the last few weeks before 1 July 2004, the demand for verifications will outstrip the global capacity to supply the qualified auditors. As well as being a SOLAS requirement, recent reports suggest that failure to obtain an ISSC by the due date will invalidate P&I cover.
