From checkout to report
You choose a project, pay once, and tell us what you know. We plan the search, work in the records and deliver a written report with every document found. Here is exactly what happens, and when.
Four steps
A clear way forward.
01
Choose and pay
Pick a project size on the prices page. Checkout by Stripe; your receipt arrives at once.
02
Tell us your story
The intake form asks for names, dates, places, your goal and copies of family papers.
03
We confirm the plan
Within two business days: which archives, which records, in what order.
04
Receive your report
Images, full translations, sources and the next step, delivered as a PDF.
Step 1 - You choose and pay
Every project on the projects & prices page is a fixed number of research hours at a fixed price, with a stated number of research goals. A research goal is one question, such as which village did my great-grandfather come from. If you are unsure, FOCUS10 with the goal Ancestral Village Identification is where most American families begin.
Payment is processed by Stripe: card, Apple Pay or Google Pay. We never see or store your card details.
Step 2 - You complete the intake form
Straight after checkout you reach a secure form. It asks for:
- Names of the ancestors you are researching, with every spelling you have seen
- Approximate dates and places of birth, marriage, emigration and death
- Any Polish place name you have come across, even if it looks misspelled
- Photos or scans of documents you already hold: naturalization papers, manifests, church certificates, letters
- The one thing you would most like to know
If you have very little, that is normal. A single naturalization record or a name on a census is often enough to begin.
Step 3 - We confirm the plan
Within two business days of receiving your form, you get an email setting out what we will search, in which archives and in what order, and when to expect the report. If your goal is not realistic within the project you chose, we say so at this point and propose what is - before any research time is spent.
Step 4 - Research
Depending on your case this means American immigration and naturalization records, digitised Polish registers, written requests to Polish state, diocesan and civil registry archives, and the physical volumes that were never filmed. Every source is logged, including those that produced nothing. On STANDARD50 and PREMIUM100 projects you receive a short progress note at the halfway point.
Step 5 - Your report
How long it takes
| Service | Typical delivery |
|---|---|
| FOCUS10 | 3-5 weeks |
| ESSENTIAL25 | 6-10 weeks |
| STANDARD50 | 3-4 months |
| PREMIUM100 | 4-6 months |
| Single Document Retrieval | 4-8 weeks |
| Archival Document Translation | 5 business days per batch of up to 5 records |
| Citizenship Assessment | 2 weeks |
| Ancestral Village Travel Plan | 4 weeks |
Digitised collections can be searched in days. Written requests to Polish archives join each archive’s own queue, which we do not control: most answer within four to six weeks, some take longer. When a reply is delayed we tell you, and we use the waiting time on the parts of the search that do not depend on it.
If we find nothing
It happens, and you deserve to know before you order. Some registers were destroyed in the wars. A negative result is documented as carefully as a positive one: every archive, every volume, every year searched, and why the search could not succeed.
The refund policy and the FAQ explain exactly how this is handled.