Welcome to Evident. We are here to help. If you are reading this article, you are a business owner who wants to access Local Services Ads, or you are a marketing agency who helps guide business owners. We are here to help you be successful in completing the background check portion of the process.
In order to be successful, you need to:
- Understand the three steps below
- Ideally, complete the first step before you log in
Why complete Step 1 before logging in?
One of the most important things to understand about the background check portion of Local Services Ads is governed by a 90 day window. Once you log-in to begin the process, a timer begins counting down that will expire at 90 days. Below is a timeline that shows all of the steps that will have to be completed within 90 days once you log-in. Filling out the roster correctly helps to ensure that you don't have to jump through hoops to fix an error later, which can jeopardize the timeline.
Note: If you already logged before you had the chance to complete the first step, then try to complete step 1 as soon as possible. If you aren't sure what counts as "logging in" or you have not heard of the 90-day window, read this article. Then come back here, and read about Step 1.
Step 1: Filling Out the Roster Correctly
Filling out the roster correctly starts before you ever log in. There are four components of understanding how to fill out the roster correctly.
- Identify Business Owners
- Identify potential employees or service professionals
- Confirm email addresses of all the individuals who will be on the roster
- Understand the roster
Click here for a more detailed explanation on the four components of filling out the roster correctly.
Step 2: Provide Initial Submissions Right Away
For every verification that is required to be completed, Evident must receive certain required pieces of information. There are a couple of key things to know:
- Evident cannot start processing the verifications until we receive all the information required
- Some background checks take longer than others (usually up to about 6 weeks)
- There's no way to predict ahead of time how long a specific individual background check will take
- The speed of a background check has very little to do with how clean an individual's criminal history record is
Because of these various factors, a delay in submission could create risk that the background checks won't be able finish before the 90-day window closes. If all background checks associated with your application are not completed within the 90 day window (if there is even a single one leftover), then the application will expire and you will be required to start the background check portion over.
To understand more about what verifications will be required, read through this article.
Step 3: Monitor for Later Submissions - And Provide Those Right Away, Too
Once you create your roster and provide the initial submissions, Evident will start working on your background check right away. In some cases, one or more additional submissions may be required. These requirements will be communicated to you through status updates on the roster. You will use the roster to manage these requirements, as well as various other actions that you might need to take during the application process. If you receive a notification that an additional submission is required, be sure to fill it out thoroughly and right away. As a general rule of thumb you should:
- Start working on getting the submission right away
- Take your time getting a good photo or filling out information - a higher quality submission will always process more quickly than a low quality submission
- Submit right away once you have a good photo/thorough submission
After we receive your follow-up submission, we will work on finalizing the decision associated with your case. In a select number of cases, a further (secondary) followup submission may be requested. When this happens, you need to fill it out right away, and try to provide more information than you did the first time.
What happens if the 90 Day Window closes and I haven't been able to meet all the requirements?
If you aren't able to accomplish all the steps in the timeline within 90 days, or any of the steps is not accomplished at all and as a result your background check is unable to finish processing before the 90 day window closes, you will have to reach out to Google Support to request a reset to your background check application.
Am I ready to log-in?
You'll be ready to log-in once you:
- Understand the 90-day timeline and the milestones you need to reach in order to be successful
- Know how to fill out the roster correctly
- Understand what the roster page looks like and what happens after you create your roster with Evident
- Understand how to handle the situations that might come up as you are going through the application process.
Once you are ready to log-in, go ahead and get introduced to the roster.