Contractor-paid background checks

Who this is for

These guides are for organizations that engage independent contractors and need a consistent, role-appropriate screening process.

• Marketplaces and home-service platforms that contract with independent providers and want every provider screened without absorbing the cost of every applicant who never completes onboarding.

How the arrangement works

1. The organization initiates screening. It selects searches appropriate to the role and invites the contractor into its process.
2. Consent is captured. The individual receives disclosures and authorizes screening before the searches begin.
3. We search. Identity and address history first, then the national criminal database, then the county courts where the contractor has actually lived, plus driving and registry searches where the work calls for them.
4. The report goes to the requesting organization for its authorized decision.

Start the order from your own platform

Some companies that want contractors to pay for their own background checks also want the contractor to start the order from inside their own platform. We can accommodate this, and no webhook is required — you simply write directly to our platform using our API, following our Order Entry XML manual.

For postback data on an order placed through an integration, the preferred option is the postBackInfo block when you submit the order. In it, you specify where you want the postback delivered and which postback types you want to receive. This is all detailed in the Order Entry XML manual, in the section titled “3.5 The postBackInfo Block.”

To post completed results back into your own platform, use our XML Results manual, “Receiving Results via XML.” It documents the result payload your team receives — order and subject details, the link to the completed report, and a section for each screening product returned — along with delivery over HTTPS or SFTP, how to pull the results for a specific order, and the short response your server sends back so we know the results were accepted.

When contractor-paid is the right model — and when it is not

Organizations should review any worker-payment model with counsel. Some settings need additional or different screening:

• Workers who are actually employees. Classification drives this. Several states restrict or prohibit charging an employee for pre-employment screening, and misclassification does not make the restriction go away. If the company controls the schedule, the method, and the tools, do not build a contractor-paid program around it.
• Licensed care, child care, and school settings. State licensing typically requires a fingerprint-based check ordered through the state, and Medicare or Medicaid participation adds exclusion screening the agency must run itself. A commercial screening does not replace those required processes.
• Regulated transportation. Driving a commercial motor vehicle over the federal weight threshold pulls the work under FMCSA rules, which require an employer-held qualification file and a Clearinghouse query.

Where an organization makes a decision based on the report — accepting or rejecting a contractor — adverse action obligations may apply regardless of who pays. Our adverse action guide walks through the steps.

What it costs and how fast it comes back

Pricing varies by the searches required for the background check and the state(s) where contractors will work — some searches carry court access fees set by the counties or states being searched. Additional court access or verification charges may be billed to the requesting organization under its arrangement. Build the exact scope for your program and see the pricing in real time with our pricing calculator, and use our access fee lookup for the exact court fees anywhere in the country.

Running a program for a whole contractor network instead? Talk to us about a program.

Background checks by contractor occupation

Each guide covers what the client is actually worried about in that line of work, the searches that answer it, payment considerations, and common screening questions.

Frequently asked questions