Tracking subcontractor COIs: spreadsheet vs. Sealinn
A spreadsheet is free and familiar. Here is where it holds up — and where it quietly lets a lapsed certificate through.
If you run a handful of subs, a spreadsheet is a reasonable place to start. It's free, you already know how it works, and a single tab can hold names, limits, and expiry dates just fine. This page isn't here to talk you out of it. It's here to show the specific moments where a manual sheet stops protecting you — a policy that lapsed last Tuesday, a renewal nobody chased, a "Y" in a cell that no one can back up on audit day — and what Sealinn does at each of those moments.
Catching an expiry before it lapses
In a spreadsheet
A date sitting in a cell doesn't warn you. Unless someone sorts and scans the sheet on the right day, the first sign a policy lapsed is often a claim, an audit, or a sub already on site with no coverage.
With Sealinn
Sealinn flags certificates that are expired or expiring, and automatic reminders fire 90, 60, 30 and 7 days before expiry — so a lapse shows up early, not after the fact.
Chasing the renewed certificate
In a spreadsheet
You dig up the sub's email, write the request, and follow up by hand — then repeat for every sub, every renewal. Easy to forget, easy to let slide.
With Sealinn
Renewal reminders go to the sub automatically, and they upload the new certificate through an upload link with no account to create. You're no longer the one sending every chase email.
Getting the numbers off the PDF
In a spreadsheet
Subs email you a PDF and you re-key the carrier, limits, and dates by hand. Every re-typed field is a chance to fat-finger a limit or a date.
With Sealinn
Sealinn reads the ACORD 25 fields — carrier, limits, dates, and the coverage boxes — one field at a time, each with a confidence score. Anything it's unsure of gets flagged for a human to check instead of silently entered.
Knowing a "Y" actually means covered
In a spreadsheet
A "Y" typed under Additional Insured or Waiver is just a note to self. It doesn't prove the endorsement exists — and a certificate on its own grants nothing.
With Sealinn
Sealinn reads the ADDL INSD and SUBR WVD columns, and checks your additional-insured, waiver-of-subrogation, and primary-&-non-contributory requirements against the certificate — then flags a gap so you know to ask the sub's agent for the actual endorsement — by form number — rather than for another certificate.
Different rules on different jobs
In a spreadsheet
One sheet usually means one set of columns. When a job needs higher limits or an extra requirement, you're bolting on tabs or keeping the exception in your head.
With Sealinn
Per-project requirement overrides and custom rules let each job carry its own limits and requirements, checked automatically against what each sub actually submitted.
Audit or dispute, months later
In a spreadsheet
You're reconstructing who was covered and when from old emails, downloaded PDFs, and a sheet that's been overwritten in place — with no usable per-certificate record of what changed or when.
With Sealinn
An append-only audit log the application cannot edit keeps a dated record of every certificate and change, and reports export to PDF, Excel or CSV — so the history is already there when someone asks for it.
When a spreadsheet is fine
A spreadsheet is genuinely fine when you work with just a few subs, they rarely change, and your certificates renew around a date you already have eyes on. If you can scan the whole list in a minute, you'll spot a coming expiry yourself, and you're comfortable knowing that a note in a cell is your own shorthand rather than proof of an endorsement. The trouble isn't the spreadsheet — it's scale and memory. If you haven't got as far as a sheet and you're running a folder and a calendar, that fails in a different place and is worth reading instead. What the gap costs when it opens is a separate question worth reading once, and what either route costs is arithmetic you can do with your own numbers. As subs multiply, renewals drift out of sync, and an audit or a claim starts asking for proof, the manual steps that were easy at five subs become the gaps that let a lapsed or under-covered sub onto the job.
Keep the spreadsheet's price, lose its blind spots
Sealinn is free for up to 10 subcontractors — no credit card. Add your subs, set your requirements, and let the reminders and coverage checks run themselves.