How do I notify someone before an employee's work authorization expires?

Last updated: September 25, 2026

Onboarded has no built-in trigger for approaching work authorization expiry. You can build one in two stages: anchor the I-9 task's expiration date to the date the employee entered on the form, then send an email ahead of that date.

Why this takes two stages

If you're coming from a system that flagged upcoming I-9 reverifications on its own, the short answer is that Onboarded doesn't. There's no automatic notification for work authorization nearing its expiry date anywhere in the product.

The obvious path — point an automation at the form's expiration date field and have it fire — isn't available either. Automations can only be triggered by two entities, task and placement. Nothing at the employee level triggers anything, there's no scheduled or calendar-based trigger, and you can't trigger directly off an arbitrary form field.

What works is moving the date onto something that can trigger. The I-9 task already has an expiration date. Stage 1 sets that expiration date from the form's work authorization field. Stage 2 is an ordinary task automation that fires a set number of days before it.

Before you start

  • Permission to edit forms and to build automations in your account.

  • The I-9 form you want to anchor to, already published in your account.

Steps

Stage 1: turn the form's date field into the task's expiration date

This part is built-in configuration on the form itself — you aren't building an automation by hand.

  1. Open the details view for your I-9 form.

  2. Select the Expiration Rules tab.

  3. Select Add Expiration Rule.

  4. Choose the Form Field strategy. The other options are Specific Time, Relative Time, and Placement End Date — none of those read a date the employee typed in.

  5. Pick the date field to anchor on. The dropdown lists only the form's date-type fields. For work authorization, the field you want is form.alien_authorized_until — on a standard I-9 it's labelled Authorized to work until (expiration date, if any). Go by the path rather than the label: accounts that have re-labelled the field on their own copy of the form will see their own wording.

  6. Select Create Expiration Rule. Behind the scenes Onboarded generates and publishes a real automation that sets the task's expiration date once the form is completed. The expiration lands at end of day on the date the employee entered.

[SCREENSHOT: The Expiration Rules tab on a form, with the Form Field strategy selected and the work authorization date field chosen]

There's also a Set Task Expiration automation action with its own form_field strategy. That's a different surface, it's feature-gated, and it isn't what this article uses. Everything above happens on the form's Expiration Rules tab.

Stage 2: send the notification ahead of that date

Now that the date lives on the task, a normal automation can act on it.

  1. Create a new automation with the trigger entity set to Task.

  2. Set the dependency property to the task's Expiration Date (expired_at). The automation now re-evaluates whenever that date is set or changed.

  3. Add a condition scoping the automation to your I-9 form, so it doesn't fire for every expiring task in the account.

  4. Add a Time node. Set Reference time to Task Expired, the duration to -30, and the unit to Day. With Task Expired and Task Due, the negative sign is how "before the baseline" is expressed — there's no separate before/after toggle. The only reference times available are Now, Task Due, and Task Expired, and with Now a negative duration is rejected with a validation error.

  5. Add a Send Email action after the time node, addressed to whoever owns reverification at your company.

  6. Publish the automation.

[SCREENSHOT: A time node with Reference time set to Task Expired and a duration of -30 Day]

Verify

Complete the I-9 form on a test employee with a work authorization date roughly 31 days out. The task's expiration date populates from the form, and the email lands the following day.

If nothing arrives, check these first:

  • The task's expiration date is actually populated. If it's empty, the Stage 1 rule didn't apply — confirm the employee filled in the date field, which only appears for employees who select an authorized-to-work status with an expiry.

  • The duration is negative. A positive 30 sends the email a month after the authorization lapsed.

  • The work authorization date is more than 30 days out. If it's closer than your offset, the send window has already passed.

Who's responsible for reverification

Under the employer sanctions provisions, the employer is responsible for reverifying an employee's employment authorization before it expires. Onboarded doesn't do that for you, and the automation above is a reminder, not a compliance control. See USCIS I-9 Central for the reverification requirements themselves.

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