How do I mark a task as completed outside Onboarded?

Last updated: September 25, 2026

When an employee already completed a form somewhere else — on paper, in a previous system, or before you moved to Onboarded — you can mark the task completed out of band and upload the finished PDF so Onboarded stays your single record of onboarding documents.

Before you start:

  • The task must have a status of Requires Action. Completed and expired tasks can't be marked out of band.

  • Have the completed document ready as a PDF. You can only attach it during this step.

What completing out of band does

Marking a task completed out of band tells Onboarded the work is done and the form lives elsewhere. The task moves to Completed, and from then on Onboarded treats it as an imported record rather than a form it collected:

  • The task's progress shows Imported instead of a percentage.

  • The task can't be viewed or edited by the employee through onboarding links, registration, or task links.

  • Change requests, Export (the audit PDF), and Create Link are no longer available on the task.

  • The only PDF on the task is the one you upload. Onboarded doesn't generate a filled or audit PDF for it.

This can't be undone. The task can't go back to Requires Action once it's completed.

Steps

  1. Open the task — from Tasks in the navigation, or from the employee's profile under the Tasks tab.

  2. Click Edit in the top-right action bar.

  3. Scroll to the Complete Out-of-Band section and click Mark as Completed.

  4. Upload the finished document under Upload completed task PDF.

  5. Check the box confirming you understand the action is irreversible.

  6. Click Mark as Completed. You're taken back to the task.

The PDF upload is optional, but skipping it means the task has no document in Onboarded at all — the PDF row on the task shows —, there's no Export button, and Export Task Documents skips the task. For I-9s, W-4s, and other forms you may need to produce in an audit, always upload the PDF.

Verify

On the task's Overview tab, confirm:

  • Status shows Completed, with the note "This task was completed out-of-band."

  • Progress shows Imported.

  • The PDF row shows View and Download for the file you uploaded.

Completing tasks out of band through the API

If you're backfilling many records, use the public API instead. Upload the PDF to the files endpoint with the purpose oob_task_pdf, then call POST /tasks/{id}/complete_out_of_band with the returned file ID as pdf_file_id. You can also pass expired_at in the same request to set when the document expires. Each uploaded file can be attached to one task only.

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