FCRA Adverse Action Process Template
Four documents and three sheets, with the waiting period computed from the standard you wrote down rather than the five days nobody can cite.
Free download · No account needed
Before you copy any template
There is no five-day rule
Three numbers circulate. Only two of them are in the statute, and neither is the one you have read.
Five business days
Not in the text. It appears in vendor templates, HR blogs and screening-provider help centres, and it has been repeated until it reads like law. It is a convention born of caution. Nothing enforces it and nothing defines it.
Before
The whole of the timing instruction. The copy of the report and the written summary of rights go to the candidate before adverse action is taken. No interval, no minimum, no number.
Three business days
Real, and almost certainly not yours. It belongs to an alternative path for a candidate applying by mail, telephone or computer for a transportation position within the Secretary of Transportation's authority. In that path the notice goes out within three business days of the action, meaning after the decision rather than before it.
Which leaves the interval as your policy. So the useful question stops being whether you followed a rule that does not exist, and becomes whether every case was held to the number you wrote down. That question has an answer, and it is a computed one.
Search this and page one tells you to wait five business days between the pre-adverse notice and the decision. That number is not in the statute. The provision on employment use of a consumer report requires a copy of the report and a written summary of rights before taking any adverse action, and names no interval at all. The three business days in the same section belongs to a narrow transportation path where the notice goes out after the decision has been taken.
So the interval is your policy, and the only question a file can answer is whether every case was held to the number you wrote. This space makes you write it, then computes each earliest permitted date from it and refuses the letter before it. Two enclosure columns sit beside that, because the summary of rights is an attachment rather than a paragraph, and one column for the sentence saying the reporting agency did not make the decision and cannot explain it.
Halverson Care ran 168 completed checks in a quarter and 23 came back reportable. Fourteen cleared at assessment. Nine went to a pre-adverse notice, two of those closed favourably during the interval, and seven ended in adverse action. Their written standard was six business days. The intervals actually used ran from four to seventeen, three of them short, and the two shortest both had a filled requisition behind them. Nobody was tracking, so the number drifted. This runs beside the interview loop and the offer.
What is in the pack
Notice Deadline Tracker
Pre-adverse date in, earliest permitted adverse date out, computed from your own written interval in business days with weekends and your observed holidays excluded. Then the date actually used, the variance, and a status of within standard or ran short taken from the arithmetic rather than from what anybody meant to do.
Case Log
One row per case with every date in the sequence. Then three columns that exist because they are the three things that go wrong. The report enclosed and the summary of rights enclosed answer separately, and a third records whether the adverse letter carried the statement about the reporting agency.
Reportable Item Register
The quarter grouped by item type, with items cleared at assessment, notices sent, favourable closures and adverse actions on each row. This is the view nobody has, because every case is filed against a candidate and no candidate is a trend.
What the Sequence Actually Requires
Where your interval gets written down, and the section explaining why you have to choose it at all. The statutory text says before and names no number. The three-day figure in the same provision runs after the decision, in a transportation path that is probably not yours.
Individualized Assessment Note
Seven sections, dated, written before any letter exists. The item as the report states it, the role's requirements quoted from the requisition, the bearing in one paragraph, what the candidate said, what was weighed, and a named owner with a title rather than a department.
Pre-adverse Action Letter
Both enclosures named in the letter and logged separately, the interval sentence carrying your number, and the sentence that no decision has been made. Field notes cover the case where that sentence is not true because the requisition was already closed.
Adverse Action Letter
The required elements laid out in order with the reporting agency block copied from that case's report, plus the sentence saying the agency did not decide and cannot explain the decision. Notes flag it as the element that vanishes whenever somebody rewrites the letter to sound kinder.
How it works
- 1
Write your interval down
One sentence naming a number of business days and your observed holidays. Every deadline in the space is computed from it, so the space refuses to run until it exists.
- 2
Open a case from the report
Send the PDF from Checkr, GoodHire or Sterling. Each reportable item gets its own row, typed against the register, with the agency's details pulled from the report itself.
- 3
The assessment is dated before any letter
Item, requirement quoted from the requisition, bearing, what the candidate said, what was weighed, named owner. The letter cannot be drafted until this exists and carries a date.
- 4
Then the interval runs, and it is checked
The tracker names the earliest date the letter may go out. Ask for it sooner and you get the date and the days remaining instead of a draft.
Frequently asked questions
Is the five business days really not a requirement?
Not in the federal text. The provision requires the report and the summary of rights before adverse action is taken and stops there. Several states and cities do impose real intervals and other conditions, and whether one reaches you is a question for your counsel. Federally, the number is yours to choose and write down.
So what is the three business days everybody cites?
Real, and narrow. It applies where a candidate applied by mail, telephone or computer for a transportation position within the Secretary of Transportation's authority. In that path a shorter notice goes out within three business days of the action being taken, in place of the usual two, which means after the decision rather than before it.
What has to be in the adverse action letter?
Notice of the action. The reporting agency's name, address and telephone number. The statement that the agency did not make the decision and cannot give the reasons. And notice of the right to a free copy from that agency within sixty days, and to dispute its accuracy. The third element is the one that disappears.
Does this tell me whether I can decline someone?
No, and it will not characterise a finding as job related or a decision as lawful either. It drafts, it dates, and it refuses a letter the file does not support. The judgement belongs to your counsel or compliance lead on your facts, reading a note written at the time rather than reconstructed after a complaint.
The candidate replied during the interval. What happens?
The case leaves the schedule. The assessment note gets rewritten with what they said and dated again, and a human reads it before anything else happens. Two of the nine cases in the worked quarter closed favourably this way, one of them because the record belonged to a different person with the same name.
Where does this sit against the rest of hiring?
Late, and deliberately apart from everything else. Screening and the interview loop run well before it, candidate communication handles every other candidate on the requisition, and the I-9 and policy paperwork belongs to the document collection pack. Four documents and three CSV sheets, free, no account needed.
Write the interval down, then hold every case to it
Send a report with something on it, the requisition, and the number of business days you intend to wait. The first thing back is the earliest date that case may close, computed rather than remembered.
Edit with AI