My employees' I-9 submissions are showing up in my inbox. Is approving it the same as completing Section 2? If not, what am I looking for when I review it in the Inbox?
The I-9 review process in WorkBright involves two primary steps:
1) Review the submission
2) Sign the employer section.
This article covers the process of reviewing the submission. Because your new employees could be hired weeks or even months before you see them in person and can officially review their I-9 documents, we’ve separated these two processes.
There are three places where you can access an employee’s I-9 submission for review.
Option 1: Review the Employee’s I-9 Submission in the Inbox
Like other forms in WorkBright, a submitted I-9 will come through in your Forms Review Inbox under the Onboarding menu.
You can either “Accept” the form as submitted or “Reject” it and send it back to the employee with the requested changes.
Note: Accepting Section 1 does not close the form out. It moves the I-9 into the Pending Employer Section queue. This is specific to the I-9 and differs from accepting an ordinary form submission.
Option 2: Recently submitted I-9s that have not yet been approved will also appear under the “Pending Review of Section 1” tab in your “I-9 Forms” inbox, as seen here:
Option 3: You could also review an I-9 submission by accessing it in the employee’s file.
When reviewing the form, you’ll notice that the employee was prompted to include an image of their I-9 document(s) AS WELL AS input information about them, such as “Issuing Authority” and “Document Number.”
You do NOT have the option to edit anything the employee has done in Section 1, so if you spot any errors there, you MUST reject it, as it is the only way to edit that information. Those errors could include, but are not limited to:
An incorrect birth date
A name that does not match their ID
A mis-entered Alien ID number
Information such as birthdate and name is auto-filled from the staff member's profile, so these fields must be updated on the profile itself to correct what appears on the I-9. Learn more about our I-9 Audit Guide + Process Checklists here.
Should I reject errors in Section 2?
It depends, but you do not have to, as you will have the ability to edit anything and everything in Section 2 when you use WorkBright to review and sign this employee’s I-9, including changing out the document images or picking different documents entirely.
Note: If you are using Remote I-9, you will need to reject the submission if there are errors in Section 2 after the I-9 has been countersigned. This is because attempting to update those document images or numbers will remove the authorized representative's signature. In this instance, you would want to reject the submission so that the information could be corrected and the I-9 re-countersigned.
Once an I-9 has been approved, it’s ready to be countersigned when the employee begins work and presents their I-9 documents to a company representative for review. To learn about the I-9 Section 2 process in WorkBright, click here .
**Additional Note
If a submission is in pending status awaiting acceptance or rejection and a new submission is requested, this will DELETE the current submission, which can NOT be recovered. You will get the message below if you request a new submission for a pending form.