VisaNew Zealand moves its online job-check maintenance to 22 November
Accredited employers and work visa applicants should check the revised outage times against recruitment and visa deadlines.
Official source date: 2026-11-13
Last verified against linked sources:
Edited and checked by the VisaWand editorial team
Which employer and worker applications will be affected
New Zealand employers preparing an Accredited Employer Work Visa job check should plan for the online service to be unavailable on Sunday 22 November. Immigration New Zealand’s 13 November notice says its systems are back online after a Microsoft outage. The agency moved its planned upgrade by a week. The current planned-upgrades page gives a window from 08:00 to 23:59 New Zealand daylight time on the Sunday for employer accreditation, job checks and the work visa itself.
The planned-upgrades page says users cannot start or continue the affected forms during that period. It also lists a separate interruption on Monday 23 November for other categories. Check the line for the exact application you are trying to submit. For a recruitment team operating from abroad, convert the Sunday interval to the local time where the person submitting the application is working.
Check the employer’s recruitment evidence and filing date
The employer accreditation and job-check overview says an employer that advertised must apply for its job check within 90 days after advertising closed. Check the closing date on the original advertisement alongside your planned submission date. If the end of that period falls during the upgrade, plan to submit a complete application before the outage where possible. The published outage notice gives no extension to the recruitment evidence deadline.
Use the employer checklist to prepare the vacancy details and required recruitment evidence. It asks for information about why the job is needed, the business and the recruitment outcome. The checklist says the current form asks for employment terms and compliance information in place of uploading the employment agreement at the job-check stage. Check the actual recruitment requirements for the role, including advertising and engagement with Work and Income where applicable. Save the supporting material, even where the form asks only for a summary.
Check the application status and the separate fee
The official fees page lists NZD 735 for a job check and directs employers to pay online at the end of the application. Check the payment step before assuming the application has been submitted. The enhanced Immigration Online guide explains that a completed form can still be shown as a draft. The application summary and payment receipt help identify whether the transaction went through.
If someone else is preparing the application, agree who will review and submit it and whose email address is the primary contact. The online guidance says notices go to that address. A recruitment coordinator should check account messages before assuming another person responded to a request, especially when an outage falls close to an evidence deadline. Keep the submitted application reference so that everyone is working from the same record. The status dashboard also lets you open correspondence and respond to a request for additional documents from within the submitted application.
Give the worker the documents and check their own filing window
An approved job check has its own deadline. The agency’s recruitment guide gives it six months from approval. A worker should apply while the approval remains valid. An employer whose approved job check is approaching expiry should tell the worker the actual date and provide the signed offer and employment agreement before the worker starts their application. Those documents are needed for the visa stage even though the employer checklist no longer calls for attaching the agreement at the job-check stage.
The worker’s application and the employer’s job check affect different deadlines. Review both with time to correct any missing details before 22 November. A worker already in New Zealand should also check their current visa. The Interim Visa guidance says a new temporary application must be received and accepted for processing before the existing visa expires for interim permission to be considered. The maintenance notice gives no individual extension, so check the worker’s actual immigration status separately.
