Right to work and right to rent checks feel simple on paper: look at documents, record the outcome, move on. When you migrate to an API, the fear is not the HTTP call. It is where the passport scan ends up and whether you can still show an auditor what happened six months later.
A letting agency with forty branches might run two thousand checks a month. Today each branch photographs documents and uploads to a shared drive. Compliance asks for an API because the drive is a breach waiting to happen. Engineering proposes a hosted IDV vendor. Legal asks whether every subcontractor becomes a data processor. Nobody has mapped the edge cases yet. That is the normal starting point.
Migration in four phases
Phase 1: Inventory your check paths
Map every place a check happens: branch tablet, HR onboarding, letting agent CRM, contractor portals. For each path note the data fields collected today, retention period, and who can access images. You will find checks you forgot about, usually in a spreadsheet maintained by a regional manager.
Phase 2: Parallel run
Run the API path beside manual checks for a defined cohort. Compare outcomes, measure false negatives, and log latency. Disagreements are valuable: they tell you where policy is fuzzy. Tools like Right Pass and Rent Pass model the yes/no outcome with signed evidence rather than shipping document images to a hosted vault.
Tip: run parallel for at least one full letting cycle or payroll period. Week-one results lie.
Phase 3: Cutover with offline tolerance
Branches lose connectivity. Rural viewings and pop-up hiring events fail when your check is cloud-only. Your migration plan needs a queue that holds signed provisional outcomes and reconciles when the link returns.
The worst time to discover your age check needs the internet is at the front door of a flat viewing with no signal.
Phase 4: Retire redundant data stores
Once API outcomes match manual quality, stop writing document images to shared drives. Keep the minimum record the law expects: who was checked, when, how, and the result. Update your retention schedule and train branch staff on the new exception path.
| Check type | Typical retention | Minimum record |
|---|---|---|
| Right to work | Employment plus 2 years | Outcome, date, method, reviewer |
| Right to rent | Per Home Office guidance | Outcome, date, document type cited |
| Manual fallback | Same as automated | Reason for fallback, approver |
For architecture detail, read How it Works.
On the host
The prove step
Where AffixIO fits in right to rent and right to work migration
Migration fails when the new API is another place passports accumulate. AffixIO is the prove step beside HR or lettings, with scans kept for exceptions only.
- StaysHR or lettings
- Runs hereProve
- LeavesEligible yes/no
It sits beside the system of record for the tenancy or employment. The CRM stores a signed eligible or not eligible outcome. Document images stay on the exception path, not the default.
What stays on the host
- The relationship. Rent Pass and Right Pass prove where the tenancy or job already lives.
- Exception scans. Manual fallback is recorded. It is not a hidden shared drive.
- Offline branches. Viewings and hiring events can queue when the uplink is poor.
- The parallel run. API outcomes can sit next to the current manual check before cutover.
What the file receives
- A signed outcome. Eligible or not, for this check, at this time.
- Fewer processors on the default path. The check does not have to ship a passport to run.
- An audit row. Not a folder of photographs as the primary evidence.
- A branch-sized trial. One office can run proofs before an estate-wide cutover.