---
title: The placement is not the finish line
description: The day a contractor starts, most agencies move the record out of the system that found them and into a folder. Everything that goes wrong, goes wrong there.
---

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 October 6, 2026

# The placement is not the finish line

 By   Echo Recruit  ·   5 minute read

*Your ATS marks them placed and stops caring. Your obligations to that person are about to run for another nine months.*

In short

- “Placed” is a status change in the ATS and the start of a long relationship everywhere else.
- Document expiry, extension conversations and the four-week check-in are all dated events you already know about — they only become emergencies when nobody is holding the date.
- A leave balance is a ledger, not a number somebody edits.
- A contractor who finished well is the cheapest placement you will ever make, and only if you know they finished and when they are free.

Watch what happens in most agencies on a contractor’s first day. The requisition closes. The candidate’s record moves to “placed” and stops appearing in anybody’s view. The recruiter gets a bell, a number on a board, and their next role.

And then a folder appears. It has the signed contract in it, a scan of a passport, a spreadsheet of hours, and whatever else accumulates. It is owned by whoever is least able to refuse, and it is where the next nine months of this relationship are going to be managed.

Every expensive thing that happens on a contract desk happens in that folder.

## What is still owed after the start date

Not in a compliance-manual sense. In a “this will cost you money or a client” sense.

1. **1Documents with an expiry date**Right-to-work evidence, visas, professional certifications, background checks, insurance where the contractor carries their own. Each has a date on it, and the date was known on day one. A visa that lapses on the 14th is not a surprise — it is a calendar entry nobody made. When it does lapse, the contractor cannot work, the client loses cover, and you are explaining both.
2. **2An onboarding checklist somebody owns**Equipment, systems access, site induction, the client’s own paperwork. The failure mode here is not that items get missed; it is that nobody can say which ones are outstanding, so the answer to “are they set up?” is always “I think so”.
3. **3Weekly timesheets, with approval**The engine of the whole desk. Hours in, approved by a named person at the client, billed. Late or unapproved hours are the largest and quietest leak on a contract book.
4. **4Leave, as a ledger**Where leave applies to the engagement, the balance is not a number in a cell. It is the sum of accruals and bookings, and it needs to be reconstructable — because the one time it will be questioned is at the end, when somebody is owed a payment for untaken days and disagrees with your figure.
5. **5The four-week check-in**A conversation with the client and a conversation with the contractor, separately, about a month in. This is the earliest warning you get about a placement that is not working, and it lands while the guarantee or rebate period is still live and while the situation is still fixable. It is the highest-value half hour on the whole desk and it is the first thing to be skipped.
6. **6The extension conversation, before week eleven**On a twelve-week assignment the extension is decided around week nine or ten. Start it at week eleven and you are negotiating against a contractor who has already taken a call from somebody else. The date to act on is the contract end date minus three weeks, and it exists the day the contract is signed.
7. **7The exit, and the record it leaves**Final timesheet, equipment returned, access revoked, client sign-off — and then the thing almost nobody captures: how it went, and when this person is free again.

## Why the folder always loses

Every item on that list is a date or a state. A folder holds neither. It holds documents, which means the only way to find out whether anything is due is for a person to open it and look — which happens when there is time, which is never, or after something has gone wrong, which is too late.

The second problem is ownership. The recruiter moved on to their next role, which is correct: it is what they are for. Nobody replaced them as the owner of this relationship, so it is owned by whoever notices, which in practice means it is owned by the client when they complain.

The third is the one nobody budgets for. When the same person is in an ATS as a candidate, in a spreadsheet as a timesheet, in accounting as a payee and in a folder as a set of documents, the four of them disagree. Their end date is different in two places. Their rate was updated in one. And the question “who is on site at Northwind this week?” takes somebody forty minutes to answer with a caveat.

## The re-book argument

Everything above is defensive. Here is the offensive version, which is usually the one that gets a change funded.

A contractor who has already worked for you, whose documents you have already checked, whose quality you have already seen, and who finished an assignment well is the cheapest placement available to you. No sourcing. No screening. A conversation and a start date.

Capturing that requires exactly two facts that the folder does not hold: how the assignment ended, and when they become available. Record those two things at exit and your best source of next quarter’s placements is a list you can sort. Fail to record them and every assignment ends with somebody walking off your book and onto somebody else’s.

The same applies to the client side. A contractor finishing in three weeks is a conversation with that client about what comes next — but only if the end date is somewhere that generates a prompt rather than somewhere that generates a search.

## The test

Ask your desk four questions and time the answers.

- Which documents expire in the next sixty days, and for whom?
- Which assignments end in the next thirty days, and has the extension been raised?
- Whose timesheet for last week has not been approved?
- Who finished well in the last six months and is available now?

If all four take under a minute, the post-placement half of your desk is under control. If any of them requires opening a folder, you have found the thing to fix — and it is almost certainly costing you more than the sourcing problem you were planning to spend money on.

In Echo Recruit

The people you placed stay in the system that placed them

The placement stays inside the same workspace as the candidate who became it. Employee records carry effective-dated assignments and pay. Onboarding checklists track document expiry, so a lapsing right-to-work document is a task rather than an incident. Leave is an append-only accrual ledger, timesheets carry approval, performance runs in cycles with calibration, and exits record clearance and an alumni record.

The people you placed get their own portal — their hours, their balances, their documents, their review — so the timesheet arrives as a submission rather than as a message on a Sunday night.

## Common questions

What does an agency still owe after a contractor starts?

Seven things, all dated or stateful: documents with expiry dates, an owned onboarding checklist, weekly approved timesheets, leave as a ledger rather than a number, the four-week check-in, the extension conversation at end date minus three weeks, and an exit that records how it went and when the person is free again.

Why does managing a placement in a folder fail?

Because every item on that list is a date or a state, and a folder holds neither. It holds documents, so the only way to find out whether anything is due is for a person to open it and look — which happens when there is time, which is never, or after something has gone wrong, which is too late.

When should you start the extension conversation?

At the contract end date minus three weeks, a date that exists the day the contract is signed. On a twelve-week assignment the extension is decided around week nine or ten. Start it at week eleven and you are negotiating against a contractor who has already taken a call from somebody else.

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