A placement guarantee promises the client a refund, credit or free replacement if a placed candidate leaves within an agreed window. Disputes start when the client and the firm disagree about whether the window applied: the start date moved, the role changed, or the departure was for a reason the clause excludes. Those disputes are decided on dates and documents, which is why an ATS migration that keeps only current values can quietly erase them.
What should be inventoried before an ATS migration affects placement guarantee dispute history?
Record classes, years of coverage, owners and the real access deadline, collected well before cutover. The point is a description a decision-maker can act on, not a copy of anything.
A checklist for the staffing software consultant running or advising on the migration:
- ☐Placement terms. Are the guarantee window and remedy stored as placement fields, as job order fields, or only in signed client agreements?
- ☐Start-date history. Were start corrections made through change requests or direct edits, and does the migration carry change requests across or only the latest placement values?
- ☐Role-change evidence. Where do recruiters log a change in duties after start: ATS notes, email, or nowhere consistent?
- ☐Claims. Is there a case, ticket or tag for placement guarantee claims, and from which year?
- ☐Decisions and credits. Who wrote the decision, and can each credit note be traced to one placement?
- ☐Coverage. Years of placements in the current ATS, plus anything imported from an earlier system.
- ☐Owners. Back office for placements, account management for claims, finance for credits.
- ☐Access deadline. The date the old system's contract or read-only access ends, confirmed by the firm.
Why dispute history is the part an ATS migration flattens
ATS migrations are scoped around the desk: candidates, contacts, open jobs and active placements. A placement guarantee dispute from four years ago is closed business, and the details that decided it are the details most migration templates treat as noise.
Start dates are the clearest case. Bullhorn's own support guidance notes that an incorrect start date is a common mistake when creating a placement. Where change requests are enabled, they control edits to a placement after it is approved, and an approved request's edits are applied to the placement record. The request history can be reviewed from the placement's Activity tab or from a Change Request List, which may need Bullhorn Support to enable. The practical question for the inventory: will the migration carry those requests, or only the start date they produced? If only the final value moves, the record of when and why it changed is left in the old system.
Two other classes sit outside the ATS by habit. Role changes after start are often agreed by email between the account manager and the client, and credit notes live in the finance system. Neither moves with an ATS migration, which is good for survival but bad for linkage, because the inventory has to note how each can still be tied back to a placement.
An illustrative inventory sheet
Illustrative only; the firm and figures are fictional. A 380-person IT staffing firm is moving to a new ATS next spring. Its operations director fills in the sheet from the migration plan and a few report counts.
| Record class | System | Years held | Owner | Moves to the new ATS? | Readable until |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Placement terms | Placement and job order fields | 2016 to now | Back office manager | Yes | Not affected |
| Start-date change requests | Old ATS change request list | 2019 to now | Back office manager | Latest value only | Old ATS contract end |
| Role-change notes | Account managers' email | Varies by person | Commercial director | No | Mailbox retention for leavers |
| Guarantee claims | ATS tag and shared tracker | Partly tagged since 2020 | Account management lead | Tag only | Old ATS contract end |
| Credit notes | Finance system | 2015 to now | Finance controller | Not affected | Finance system kept |
Reading the sheet: terms and credits are safe. The change request history and the claim tracker, which together show whether a guarantee window really applied, depend on the old ATS contract end, and role-change emails depend on how the firm handles mailboxes of people who leave.
Which date is the real deadline, and what is not a reason to keep data?
The real deadline is the date the old ATS contract or its read-only access ends, confirmed in writing by the firm. Go-live is earlier and matters less. Add the mailbox retention rule for departed staff, because that is where role-change evidence often sits.
Keep legal retention separate from choice. For example, U.S. employers covered by EEOC rules must keep personnel and employment records for one year from the record or the personnel action, and longer while a discrimination charge is pending, under 29 CFR 1602.14. That duty applies whatever the migration plan says; it is not a reason to keep anything else, and it does not decide licensing. Do not recommend retaining data the firm has no authority or reason to keep. The Bullhorn data export page covers the wider placement and job-order history.
Does the firm qualify, and what stays unknown?
The introduced firm needs 50+ full-time employees at peak (contractors excluded); placed workers on assignment at clients do not count, only the firm's own full-time staff. It also needs a documented operating history, rights to license the records, and an authorized contact. Companies in the U.S., Canada and the EU qualify, as do companies in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, South Africa, Latin America, the UAE and Saudi Arabia when at least 90% of the data is in English.
Partners sign the Channel Partner Agreement before submitting introductions, and the first valid introduction within the 90-day window is credited when the company submits a verified application. Discovery stays at metadata level: what, how much, how long, which system, who owns it. Partners never ask for or handle exports, notes or client agreements.
What stays unknown until SourceX reviews it: buyer interest in this record type, the outcome of the rights review, what de-identification or client consent is needed, and whether any offer follows. Candidate data questions are covered in who owns candidate data at a staffing agency, and more staffing record types are on the staffing and recruiting page and the industries hub.
Go deeper on placement guarantee disputes
- Exception examples for placement guarantee disputes: one disputed placement worked through step by step, with the record behind each decision.
- Records across systems for placement guarantee disputes: a system map of the identifiers that join ATS, email and finance records.
- Who can license placement guarantee disputes records: who can say yes and who cannot, as a decision tree for which executive to introduce and what needs client sign-off.
- Referral brief template for placement guarantee disputes: a fill-in, metadata-only brief for the introduction.
Next step
Refer a company. Earn up to $100,000. Default reward: 25% of Actual Supplier Payout, capped at $100,000 cumulatively per referred company. Eligibility and payment conditions apply, and a signed Schedule A or addendum can differ. A lead, meeting or signature alone does not trigger payment.
If the migration inventory shows years of guarantee claims that can still be traced from job order to credit note, register as a partner, check the firm against who qualifies, and read the program terms before sending the operations director your one-page handoff.