ImmiAccount application status: what Received, Initial assessment, Further assessment and Finalised mean, what is happening in each, and what to do

MARN 1576536

What the status page is, and is not

The ImmiAccount lists each application with a status, and the status is a label the Department's case management system attaches to the file as it moves through processing. It is not a queue position, not an estimate of time, not a signal of the likely outcome, and not a message to the applicant; the Department communicates with applicants through the correspondence and messages attached to the application, through email notifications that point to them, and through requests for information, and the status is a by-product of the officer's workflow. The Department does not publish a detailed definition of each status, and what follows is what the statuses mean as they are understood in practice by agents who watch thousands of applications move through them, with the caveat that a status that is unusual for the visa, or that stays unusual for a long time, is read against the particular application rather than against the general pattern. The two things that tell an applicant more than the status are the published processing times for the subclass and stream, which the processing times guide explains how to read, and the correspondence tab, which holds every letter the Department has sent.

Received

Received means the application has been submitted, the visa application charge has been paid, the system has accepted it as lodged, and it is waiting in the queue for its subclass to be allocated to an officer; nobody has read it. For a visitor visa the queue may be days; for a partner, parent or some skilled visas it is months, and the application sits at Received for the whole of that time without that meaning anything about it. The Received stage is the time to make the application complete: every document the checklist lists, the health examinations where the visa allows them to be done before a request, which for most permanent visas it does through the My Health Declarations or the HAP ID generated in the account, the police certificates where their validity will last, and Form 80 or 1221 where the visa commonly asks for them, so that when an officer opens the file it can be decided rather than queried. An application that is complete at Received moves through the later stages in days; an application that produces a request at Initial assessment goes to the back of a second queue. A change in circumstances during Received, a new passport, a new address, a new child, a change of relationship, is notified through the account as it happens, and the change of circumstances guide covers how.

Initial assessment

Initial assessment means an officer has been allocated and has begun to read the application against the criteria, checking that the application is valid, that the documents answer each criterion, that identity is established, and that health and character have been requested or are in hand. It is the stage applicants greet with relief and it means less than it seems: the officer may complete the assessment and grant the same day for a complete application on a short-queue visa, or may read it, list what is missing, send a request for information with a period to respond, and move the file to Further assessment while the request is outstanding; or may initiate the health and character checks and move it there while they run. An application that sits in Initial assessment for weeks is usually one on an officer's list behind other files rather than one with a problem, and the stage is not a window in which the applicant should add documents unprompted, unless something has changed, because a document uploaded mid-assessment is read when the officer next opens the file and can move the status backwards, as the backwards section explains.

Further assessment

Further assessment is the status for an application that an officer has assessed and that needs something more before a decision can be made, and it is where most applications spend most of their time, which is why it is the status that produces the most anxiety. The something more is any of a long list: health examination results that have been referred to a Medical Officer of the Commonwealth for an opinion, which happens for any condition flagged by the panel physician and for most applicants over a certain age or with a declared condition; character checks with external agencies, including national and overseas police and intelligence checks, which the Department does not control, which take weeks for most applicants and many months for some nationalities and some histories, and which are the single most common reason an otherwise complete application sits for a long time; verification of evidence, the employer called, the university written to, the relationship evidence read against third-party records, which the verification call guide covers; a request for information sent to the applicant, during whose response period the status stays here; a referral of a policy question or an integrity concern to another area; or the officer's attention moving to other files while a check runs, since Further assessment is also the status of a file waiting for the officer to return to it. The Department does not tell the applicant which of these is happening, and the status does not change as the items complete. The applicant's part is to answer any request within its period, to keep the details current, and to leave the file alone otherwise. An application in Further assessment is not an application in trouble; an application in Further assessment that has received a request for information about something the applicant cannot provide, or a natural justice letter, is one to take advice on, and the refusal guides cover those letters.

The health examination status lines

Beside the application status, the account shows a line for each applicant's health examinations, and these lines are more informative than the main status because they describe a defined process. Health clearance provided, no action required, means the examinations are complete and have been assessed as meeting the requirement, and nothing further is needed on health; Health examinations required, or a request to organise them, means the applicant arranges them through the HAP ID in the account; Examinations received, or results referred for assessment, or further medical results required, means the panel results are with the Department and, in the referred case, with a Medical Officer of the Commonwealth, who may ask for further tests or a specialist report through a request that arrives in the correspondence. A line that stays at referred for months is the health check running its course, which for a declared condition, a tuberculosis history or a child with a disability takes time and the health undertaking guide and the health waiver guides cover what follows. A health clearance has a validity, twelve months in the ordinary case, and an application that outlasts it produces a request to repeat the examinations, which the applicant does promptly rather than in advance.

The status that moves backwards

An application moves from Further assessment back to Initial assessment, or from Initial assessment back to Received, and the applicant reads a bad sign. In the ordinary case it is a system event: the file has been reallocated from one officer to another, or from one processing office to another, and the new allocation resets the status; or the applicant has uploaded documents, which re-queues the file for the officer to review them and shows as a backward move; or a system process has re-set statuses across a caseload. None of these says anything about the outcome, and the documents uploaded are the usual cause. An applicant who uploads a large set of documents unprompted, and then watches the status move backwards, has caused what they are worried about. The decision arrives in the correspondence and nowhere else.

Finalised

Finalised means a decision has been made on the application: granted, refused, or withdrawn, and the letter recording it has been placed in the account under the application's correspondence or messages. The email that tells the applicant to look is a notification, sent separately, and it is delayed, filtered to spam, sent to an old address, or lost often enough that an applicant who sees Finalised opens the correspondence rather than waiting for the email; the account is the record and the date on the letter is the date that matters. A grant notice carries the visa grant number, the subclass and stream, the conditions, the must-not-arrive-after date for an offshore grant and the visa period, and the holder checks each against what was applied for, because a grant with a wrong condition or a wrong period is corrected by a request, not by living with it, and the grant notice guide covers that. A refusal notice carries the reasons, the review rights and the period for review, which runs from the date the notice is taken to have been received under the Act, which for an email notification is the day it was sent in the ordinary case, so an applicant who reads a refusal a week after Finalised has already lost a week of a short period, and the refusal guide covers what follows. A granted visa also shows in VEVO within hours with the passport details, which is the independent check for an applicant whose email has not arrived.

What you can usefully do at each stage

At Received: complete the application, with every document the checklist lists, health examinations done in advance where the visa allows, police certificates timed so they last, and the forms the visa commonly requests; notify any change of circumstances; and read the published processing time for the stream rather than the status. At Initial assessment: nothing, unless something has changed, in which case notify it; and watch the correspondence for a request. At Further assessment: answer any request for information completely and within the period, which is the single thing most within the applicant's control, with an extension sought in writing before the period ends if a document cannot be obtained in time; keep health and police evidence valid, repeating them only when asked; keep the address and passport current; and, where grounds exist, make a priority processing request on the grounds the priority guide sets out, which are narrower than most applicants hope. At Finalised: open the letter the same day, read the conditions or the reasons, and act within the period the letter sets. At every stage: keep the login details, the TRN and the password where they can be found, because an applicant locked out of the account at Finalised has a problem that takes days to fix.

What does nothing

Refreshing the status page does nothing, and reading it daily produces the backwards-move anxiety the earlier section describes. Calling the Department's service line produces the status you can already see, read by an operator who cannot see the officer's notes. Emailing the processing office produces an automated reply and, for most offices, no human one, and an email sent to a general address is not attached to the file. Uploading documents the officer has not asked for, to show diligence, re-queues the file and moves the status backwards. Lodging a complaint about an application that is within the published processing time produces a form response, because the Department's position is that an application within the published time is being processed. Withdrawing and relodging to get a new case officer produces a new place at the back of the queue, a new charge, and the same checks. Asking a Member of Parliament to intervene in an application within the published time produces a courteous letter. Each of these is done by applicants every day, and each costs time or money without moving the file; the things that move it are in the previous section.

When the time is well past the published time

An application that has been in Further assessment for well beyond the published processing time for its stream, with no request outstanding and no change the applicant has caused, is a different matter, and the steps are set out in the processing delay guide: a written enquiry through the account's channels, a priority request where grounds exist, a complaint to the Department's feedback unit where the delay is unexplained and well outside the published time, a representation through a Member of Parliament for an application outside the time, the Commonwealth Ombudsman for a complaint the Department has not resolved, and, for the rare case of years of unexplained delay, the court's power to require a decision within a reasonable time, which is a lawyer's remedy and a last one. Most applications beyond the published time are waiting on an external check, usually character, and the delay guide helps the applicant tell the difference between that and a file that has been lost.

The status checklist

1. Read the published processing time for the subclass and stream; the status does not carry a date.
2. At Received, make the application complete: documents, health where allowed, police certificates timed to last, the forms the visa usually asks for.
3. Notify every change of circumstances through the account as it happens.
4. Watch the correspondence tab and the email for requests; answer each completely and within its period, and ask in writing for more time before it ends if needed.
5. Do not upload unrequested documents mid-assessment; a backward move is usually that.
6. Read the health status lines separately; a referral is the check running, not a refusal.
7. At Finalised, open the letter that day; the review period runs from the date it was sent.
8. Beyond the published time with nothing outstanding, follow the delay guide; before it, the status page is not the lever.

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General information only, current at October 2026; not advice on your own case. The ImmiAccount application statuses are labels of the Department of Home Affairs’ case management system, which the Department does not define in detail in published material; the meanings above are as commonly understood in practice and the Department’s correspondence governs in every case. Processing times are as published by the Department for each subclass and stream and change monthly; the notification and review provisions of the Migration Act 1958 and the Migration Regulations 1994 apply as in force at the date above. Outcomes depend on the Department’s assessment of each application; no registered migration agent can guarantee a result (Code of Conduct, Migration Agents Regulations). Keshab Chapagain, MARN 1576536.