Police Check
A Police Check is different from the registry look-ups elsewhere in this section. Rather than looking up a card someone already holds, Oho submits and obtains the check on your behalf.
A police check is filed here as a credential, because that's how it behaves on a worker's profile: it has a result, an expiry, and a re-check cadence, and it counts towards compliance like any other credential.
It also does the job of a ban check — it surfaces disclosable outcomes that may disqualify someone, rather than confirming a clearance they hold. That's why you'll find it under Credentials but see it discussed alongside ban checks: same record, two purposes.
The distinction that matters in practice is the direction of the answer. On a credential, green means we found their clearance and it's valid. On a ban check, green means we found nothing. A police check's result reads like a credential's — a clear check is a positive finding about the person, not an absence of one.
Who needs it
Workers and applicants in roles that require a criminal-history check. Oho tracks worker police checks and applicant police checks separately, so a check run during recruitment stays distinct from one run for an engaged worker.
What Oho needs
For a new check: the personal details needed to initiate it, including the worker's date of birth. Because the check is submitted rather than looked up, there's no card number to supply.
For a check you already hold from a prior system, there is a reference number — and importing those has two firm requirements.
On the Credentials sheet, use Credential Type npc, leave State blank or set it to AUS, and give the row an Issue Date.
The issue date isn't optional here: the check's expiry is calculated from it, so a row without one is skipped rather than imported. See Spreadsheet columns.
Imported checks are loaded as already-completed and historic. Oho doesn't re-run them and no provider is contacted — the point is to make the worker's record accurate from day one, not to buy a check you've already paid for.
Before you start
Running new checks needs a provider account, configured as a Verification Source. Contact support if police checks aren't yet enabled for your organisation.
Importing historic checks needs nothing beyond the spreadsheet.
How Oho verifies it
The check is submitted to your configured provider and the result comes back showing any disclosable court outcomes. Results usually come back within minutes, though a check that needs manual adjudication can take days.
That variability is normal and is not a fault: a check sitting in progress for a day or two is the provider working, not Oho waiting. Along the way you'll see the provider's own progress wording — Check initiated, Application in progress, Identity verification, Sent to ACIC — because the applicant completes their own identity verification directly with the provider.
Oho's data model has a slot for an International Police Check, and you may see it referred to. It isn't implemented — there's no way to order one today. National Police Checks are the only kind Oho can run.
Reading the result
Every check resolves to one of these outcomes:
| Status (as shown in the app) | Colour | What it means | API value |
|---|---|---|---|
| May engage | Green | Valid and current — the person is cleared for the work. | MAY_ENGAGE |
| May not engage | Red | Not valid — expired, suspended, not found, or a match on a ban register. | MAY_NOT_ENGAGE |
| Under review | Yellow | Cleared, but worth a closer look — for example a condition on the clearance, a possible match, or an expiry coming up. | REVIEW_REQUIRED |
| In progress | Grey | Still being checked. | IN_PROGRESS |
| Error | Grey | The source couldn't be reached; Oho will try again. | ERROR |
| What comes back | What Oho shows | Why |
|---|---|---|
| No disclosable court outcomes | May engage | A clear check |
| Disclosable court outcomes | Under review | A person must weigh them against the role — see below |
| The provider declined or couldn't complete it | May not engage | No usable result |
| Submitted, awaiting the provider | In progress | Normal, and can last days |
| Past its expiry | May not engage | The check is too old to rely on |
A police check that returns disclosable court outcomes is Under review, never automatically red. Whether an outcome bears on a particular role is a decision for a person with the context to make it — and often a legal one. Oho's job is to surface it and record who decided what.
When it doesn't verify
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| In progress for a day or more | The provider is adjudicating manually | Normal for police checks. Leave it |
| An imported row didn't import | npc rows are skipped without an Issue Date | Add the issue date and re-import |
| An imported row became a credential, not a check | State was set to something other than AUS or blank | Use AUS or leave it blank so the row routes to the police-check importer |
| A check you imported wasn't re-run | Intended — imported checks are historic and aren't re-submitted | Nothing. Run a fresh check if you need a current one |
| May not engage — couldn't be completed | The provider rejected the submission, often on identity details | Check the worker's name and date of birth against their ID and resubmit |
| Under review on a clear-looking worker | Something disclosable came back | Open the check and read it. Don't clear it without a decision recorded |
Renewals & monitoring
Police checks don't renew — they age. A check is a snapshot of the day it was run, so what matters is its expiry rather than any status change on a register.
Police checks aren't polled on a schedule the way the live registers are. There's no register to ask — a completed check doesn't change — so what Oho watches is the expiry, through the expiry ladder.
Results for checks still in flight are reconciled with the provider when a run is triggered, rather than continuously.
When a check does expire, a new one has to be run and paid for. That makes police checks the credential worth setting your expiry warnings widest on — see How monitoring works for widening the thresholds.
Related
- Credentials overview
- Ban Checks — the other framing of this check
- National Crime Check
- Run a police check
- How monitoring works