SFN 11845 Employment Verification North Dakota

The Only Form That Counts

When you apply for a journeyman or master electrician license in North Dakota, the State Electrical Board requires proof that you've accumulated the required hours of supervised experience. The board requires Form SFN 11845, the Employment Verification form, for this experience documentation.

Not an employer letter on company letterhead. Not your W-2s. Not a personal logbook. Not tax records showing you were employed in the trade. The NDSEB does not treat these documents as primary proof. If your hours aren't documented on SFN 11845, they don't exist in the board's eyes.

What the Form Requires

Each SFN 11845 covers one employment period under one supervising master. If you've worked for three different employers, you need three separate forms.

The form captures:

• Your personal information and apprentice registration number
• Your employer's company name and the supervising master's license number
• The date range of your employment
• Total hours of supervised electrical construction experience during that period
• The supervising master's signature
• A notary stamp and seal

That notarization requirement is critical. An unsigned or un-notarized SFN 11845 is rejected on sight. Both the supervisor's signature and the notarization must be present.

Why You Should Collect Signatures Progressively

The biggest SFN 11845 mistake isn't filling the form out wrong — it's waiting too long to get it signed.

Apprenticeships in North Dakota run a minimum of three years. During that time, supervisors retire, companies close, employers move out of state, and professional relationships end. If you wait until you're ready to apply for your exam to track down signatures from every master you've worked under, you may find that one or more of them is unreachable.

The board can't waive the SFN 11845 requirement for hours where the supervisor is unavailable. Those hours simply don't get counted.

The practical solution: get each SFN 11845 signed and notarized at the end of every employment period, or at regular intervals if you stay with one employer long-term. Treat each signed form like a paycheck — something you collect when the work is done, not something you chase down years later.

Out-of-State and Multi-Employer Complications

If you earned hours outside North Dakota, those hours still need SFN 11845 verification — and the supervising master in the other state must have held an active license in a jurisdiction with licensing and inspection rules comparable to North Dakota's. If that other state had no licensing requirement, or if your supervisor wasn't licensed, the board will reject those hours.

For workers who've had many short-term employers (common in North Dakota's energy and agricultural sectors), each stint requires its own SFN 11845. Four employers over five years means four separate forms, four notarizations, and four supervisors who need to cooperate.

What Happens When You Can't Get a Signature

There's no official backdoor for most license categories. If a past employer refuses to sign or is genuinely unreachable, those hours are lost for journeyman and master applications.

The one exception: Power-Limited Electrician applicants with unverified out-of-state hours can request a placement exam from the board. But that exam comes with a strict single-attempt rule — fail it, and you're permanently ineligible to retake it (though you can file a written appeal within 30 days).

For everyone else, the lesson is the same: document early, document often, and store your signed SFN 11845 forms somewhere you won't lose them.

The North Dakota Electrician License Guide includes an hour documentation log keyed to the SFN 11845 process, with prompts for supervisor details and a timeline for when to collect signatures before each employment period ends.

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