References
The References page (under Compliance & Governance in the sidebar) is where HR keeps a record of reference letters written for departing employees and logs the background check requests that come in from a former employee's new employer or a screening agency. It's available on the Team and Enterprise plans.
There are two separate lists here: reference submissions and background check requests. They're related in spirit but tracked independently.
Reference submissions
A reference submission is a record HR creates - typically linked to a specific offboarding - that captures:
- The employee's name and email
- A reference type: general, technical, character, or performance
- The actual reference text (up to 20,000 characters)
- Whether it's confidential
- Who requested it and which organisation they're with
- A status: draft, submitted, or sent
There's no employee-facing request form and no AI drafting assistant - HR writes the content directly in the submission and moves it through draft → submitted → sent as it progresses. You can edit or delete a submission at any point, and every submission can optionally be tied back to the offboarding record it came from.
Background check requests
When a former employee's prospective employer or a background-check vendor reaches out, log it here rather than tracking it over email. A background check request records:
- The requesting organisation, a contact name, and a contact email
- The check type: employment, full, education, or reference
- A status: pending, in progress, completed, or declined
- Free-text notes
When you respond to a request, you can fill in a structured verification block - start date, end date, job title, department, rehire eligibility, salary confirmation, reason for leaving, and employment type. Only those specific fields are stored; there's no free-form document generation for this. Moving the status to completed or declined automatically stamps who responded and when.
Neither reference submissions nor background check requests trigger emails to the employee or the requesting party on their own - PurpletGo just keeps the record. You'll still need to send the actual letter or confirmation through your own channel unless you're using a delivery step you've built with automation rules or a document template elsewhere in the product.
Permissions
Viewing either list requires the references_view permission (superadmin, admin, HR, and manager roles have this by default). Creating, editing, or deleting submissions and background check requests requires references_manage (superadmin, admin, and HR by default).