CISR22640 - Authenticate customer: authentication: using ‘trace’ facility to find scheme
Source: gov.uk (2025-06-06)


This action guide starts with a contact from a customer who claims to be known to HMRC but cannot provide contractor scheme details (Accounts Office Ref or Employer Reference) and ends at the point of either
- Successful identification of the scheme against which CIS activity is to be recorded, or
- Your decision that the caller has not supplied sufficient information to enable you to identify the scheme and determine that they are the person authorised to act in relation to the contractor scheme.
In practice and depending on the purpose of the visit or call the customer will usually provide you with details of their name and reference or show some sort of identifying document. However, the following steps must be carried out for all face to face or telephone contacts to ensure that the caller is who they say they are and to record the contact in the Contact History.
- Open the CIS system to obtain the ‘Identify Customer’ window.
Select [Find Scheme] to go to the ‘Identify Customer – Find Criteria’ window.
- Enter details in the fields provided. You will be more likely to ‘find’ the customer if you try the searches in the following order
- Full surname and date of birth (you can abbreviate the surname but you must enter a # symbol after the last character. The date of birth must be in this format: DDMMYYYY).
- Full surname and postcode (you can abbreviate the surname but you must enter a # symbol after the last character. You can enter all or part of the postcode followed by a # symbol and two lines of the address).
- Postcode and first character of surname followed by a # symbol
- Postcode only
- Full address excluding postcode (you must enter at least two address lines).
- Select [Find] to start the search facility.
- Where the contact can be identified from those displayed in the ‘Results’ list box you should make a selection by ticking the box alongside the appropriate record. Where necessary you can select the [More Details] button to obtain further information on the selected record. The additional details displayed should help you to establish the correct customer.
- Where the ‘More Details’ window for the record confirms the trace
- Select [OK] to go back to the 'Identify Scheme' window
- Ensure the ‘checkbox’ for the selected record in the ‘Results’ panel is selected
- Select [OK] to return to the ‘Identify Customer’ window (the AO Reference for the selected record will appear in the ‘AO Reference’ field)
- Ensure the appropriate selection has been made from the available options in the ‘Contact’ and ‘Channel’ drop-down lists
- Select ‘OK’ to move to the ‘Authenticate’ window.
- If after viewing more details for a customer you find that they are not relevant to the contact, you must repeat the process until you identify the correct customer.
You need to take particular care when this window includes a ‘Bogus’ contact indicator – this will include a record of all suspect contacts during the last 3 months.

You now need to follow the appropriate guidance for the authentication process. For the Authentication Action Guide index, see CISR22600 (https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/construction-industry-scheme-reform/cisr22600).