Checking the status of your background check or drug screen
Last updated: September 21, 2026
Applies to: any worker whose assignment includes a background check or a drug screen, including US W-2 employees, independent contractors, and Canadian T4 employees. If your assignment needs no screening, you will never see these steps.
Summary: Your screening status lives in your onboarding checklist at app.ascen.com. Check there first, refresh your session if the status looks stale, and check your email (including spam) for a message from the screening provider, because a check waiting on you is the most common reason it stops moving.
Check the status yourself
Log in at app.ascen.com.
Open your onboarding checklist. It opens automatically while onboarding is still in progress.
Find the screening step. A step that is not marked complete is what is holding you up.
If a step still shows as waiting after you were told it cleared, log out and back in, or refresh the page. Status changes made on our side do not always appear in a browser session you already had open.
See Getting started: your onboarding checklist for how the checklist works, and How do I know when my onboarding is complete and I can start work? for what a completed checklist looks like.
Check your email before you call us
Your screening runs through one of the professional screening providers Ascen works with. If the provider needs anything from you, a clearer copy of a document, an address you lived at, or a scheduling link for a drug screen, they email you directly. A request sitting unopened in your inbox or spam folder is the single most common reason a check stops moving, and it is the fastest thing you can fix without contacting anyone.
What the usual states mean
In progress or pending. The provider is searching. Criminal searches run in every county where you have lived and worked, and some counties still search physical records by hand.
Waiting on you. The provider has asked you for something. Answer the email and the check restarts on its own.
Complete. Nothing more is needed from you on that step. Your checklist moves on.
A result that needs review. Something on the report needs a closer look before a decision is made. You will hear about it in writing, and you get a chance to respond. See the article on results that need review.
How long it should take
Most checks finish within a few days, but a longer address history, a common name, an international component, or a county court backlog can push one out to several weeks, and court-dependent searches cannot be expedited by anyone. Why is the background check taking longer than expected? explains the reasons in detail.
Screening is not the same as account approval
If your portal tells you to refrain from working until your account is approved, that is a separate verification step and not a screening result. See Why your portal says to refrain from working until your account is approved.
When to contact us
Email support@ascen.com if your start date is close and the status has not changed, if the checklist shows a screening step you cannot open, or if you never received an email from the provider at all. Include your full name and your start date so we can look it up quickly. Your staffing partner ordered the screening, so they can also chase it on your behalf.