Document Validation
What identity documents Greenroom accepts for onboarding, and the file requirements for uploading them
"Document validation" in Greenroom mostly means one thing: proving a payee is eligible to work in the U.S., using the federal I-9 process. This page covers what documents qualify, the file requirements for uploading them, and what a manager has to do afterward for anyone paid as an employee.
Proving work eligibility (Form I-9)
During onboarding, a payee (or the manager, on their behalf) chooses one of two paths:
- List A — one document that proves both identity and work authorization.
- List B + List C — two documents: one that proves identity, and a separate one that proves work authorization.
| List A (pick one) | List B — identity (pick one) | List C — work authorization (pick one) |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. passport or passport card | Driver's license or state ID card | Social Security card (unrestricted) |
| Permanent Resident Card (green card, Form I-551) | Government ID with photo or identifying details | U.S.-issued birth certificate (certified copy) |
| Foreign passport with a temporary I-551 stamp or notation | School ID card with a photograph | Certification of Birth Abroad (FS-545 / DS-1350) |
| Employment Authorization Document with photo (Form I-766) | Voter registration card | Employment authorization document issued by DHS |
| Foreign passport with Form I-94 authorizing employment | U.S. military card or draft record |
Greenroom shows this as a single card with a List A / List B + List C picker. Whichever path is chosen, the card reads On file once the required document(s) are uploaded, or Needed until they are.
Uploading documents
Whatever you're uploading — I-9 documents, a W-9, a certificate of insurance, or anything else on a payee's checklist — the same rules apply:
- File types: PDF, JPG, PNG, or WEBP.
- File size: up to 10 MB per file.
- How many: up to 20 files total per payee, across every document type combined — generous enough that it's rarely a practical limit.
If a file doesn't qualify, the message says exactly why — "PDF, JPG, PNG, or WEBP only," or "Files are limited to 10 MB." Nothing is uploaded until it passes both checks.
The employer's I-9 Section 2
For anyone paid as an employee, a payee uploading their documents isn't the last step. A manager has to separately examine what was uploaded and certify Section 2 — a federal requirement, not a Greenroom-specific one. It appears as its own "I-9 — Section 2" card on the payee's record once documents are on file, and Greenroom walks through the fuller sequence this fits into in Payee Onboarding.
Certifying it means typing in, for each document, the title, issuing authority, document number, and expiration date (left blank if the document doesn't expire) — exactly as they appear on the document. The manager then signs with their own name and certifies under penalty of perjury, using the fixed federal attestation statement. Federal law requires this within 3 business days of the employee's start date.
None of these typed fields — including the document number — are checked against a format. There's no "too short" or "wrong pattern" rejection. Type them exactly as they appear on the document itself; a mistyped number won't be caught automatically, so it's worth double-checking against the original before certifying.
Loan-outs, contractors, and vendors don't owe this second step.
Names
Greenroom doesn't restrict what characters a name can contain — apostrophes, hyphens, accented characters, and so on all work fine. The only real requirement is that the field isn't left blank.
Next steps
See Form Validation for how other fields are checked, Payee Onboarding for the full onboarding sequence, or Adding Payees for how a payee record gets created in the first place.