The Contractor Compliance Guide

Why subcontractor compliance matters

When a subcontractor's insurance lapses mid-project, liability flows upward. A single expired Certificate of Insurance (COI) can void your own coverage, delay a draw, or expose your company to claims that should never have been yours. Most compliance failures aren't dramatic — they're a missing W-9, a license that quietly expired two weeks ago, or an additional-insured endorsement no one ever collected.

The documents you actually need to track

For US general contractors, the baseline set is:

• Certificate of Insurance (COI) — general liability, auto, workers' comp, with you named as additional insured.
• W-9 — current tax year, signed.
• State license — verified, not expired, scoped to the trade.
• Safety / OSHA documentation when the project requires it.
• Master Subcontractor Agreement — signed and on file.

For UK general contractors, the equivalents are:

• Public & Employers' Liability insurance certificates.
• CIS registration and UTR for tax deduction status.
• CSCS cards for site operatives.
• Health & Safety policy for firms with 5+ employees.
• RAMS for the specific scope of work.

The cost of doing this in spreadsheets

The default workflow is a shared spreadsheet, an inbox folder, and a project manager who remembers to check things before a draw. That works until it doesn't. The failure modes are predictable:

• Expiry dates aren't watched, so a renewal slips past and nobody notices until an audit.
• Documents live in email threads, not against the subcontractor record.
• Onboarding a new sub takes a week of back-and-forth because there's no self-serve upload link.
• Reporting to insurers or owners means rebuilding the same status report from scratch every month.

What a working compliance system looks like

A subcontractor compliance system needs four things:

1. A document type per requirement — COI, W-9, license, anything else you care about — each with its own expiry rules.
2. A self-serve portal the subcontractor can upload to without creating an account or waiting on you.
3. Automatic expiry tracking with reminders that fire before things lapse, not after.
4. A single status view across every subcontractor and project, so you can answer "are we covered?" in one screen.

How SubTrack handles it

SubTrack is built around this exact loop. You define your document requirements once, send each subcontractor a private upload link, and the dashboard tracks expiries, sends reminders, and flags gaps before they become problems. No more spreadsheet, no more chasing.

If you're tracking compliance for more than a handful of subcontractors, the spreadsheet is the bottleneck — not your team.