A ghost contractor is an independent contractor or freelancer whose active engagement with a business has ended but who has not been formally offboarded from the company's systems. Ghost contractors continue to appear in contractor databases, payment queues, compliance workflows, and access logs, generating costs and administrative overhead for work that is no longer happening. The term is sometimes used interchangeably with zombie contractor.

The clearest indicator is a mismatch between your active contractor records and recent payment activity. Pull a list of all contractors marked as active or open in your contractor management platform and cross-reference against payment history from the past 60 to 90 days. Contractors with no recent payment activity but an open status are strong candidates for review. Also cross-check against system access logs to identify accounts that remain active for workers who are no longer appearing in project assignments.