Getting started

Set your requirements before you add anyone

This is the one instruction on this page you would not arrive at on your own, because the navigation suggests the opposite. Subcontractors is the biggest thing in the sidebar and it is where most people begin — they import the list, request certificates, and the documents start arriving. Every one of those is then checked against a requirement set that is still empty, so every one of them passes.

Nothing looks wrong. The dashboard is green, the certificates are filed, and the checking that is the entire point of the exercise did not happen. Requirements take about ten minutes and they are what turns a filing cabinet into a check, so set them on the first day: what to put in them and why.

The four steps

1. 1Set your requirement set. Limits, which endorsements you need, and which documents beyond the certificate — a W-9, a license, safety cards. This becomes the default every subcontractor is measured against. A project can override it later without changing the default.
2. 2Add your subcontractors. One at a time if you have a handful, or paste a spreadsheet if you have a list already. What you need per sub is a company name and an email address; everything else can follow.
3. 3Request the documents. Sealinn generates an upload link per subcontractor, scoped to the documents you are actually asking for. Your sub uploads from a phone with no account to create — what that looks like from their side.
4. 4Check what comes back. Anything Sealinn could not read confidently, or that fails your requirements, goes to your review queue rather than through it. What to do on that screen.

That is the setup. After it, the recurring work is the review queue and nothing else: reminders go out 90, 60, 30 and 7 days before expiry on their own, and the subs upload renewals through the same link.

What the first week actually looks like

Two things surprise people, and both are worth knowing in advance rather than discovering.

The first is that a batch of historical certificates will fail your requirements — not because anything is wrong with Sealinn's reading, but because they were collected before you had written the requirement down. A sub carrying $1M where your new set asks for $2M was always carrying $1M; the difference is that now something is saying so. Work through them in the review queue rather than lowering the requirement to make the screen go green.

The second is that some subs simply will not respond to the first request. That is the ordinary case and the reason the reminder cadence exists rather than a single email. If a sub has no email address on file, the reminder cannot go anywhere — Sealinn will tell you it was skipped rather than reporting a send that did not happen, and that is a real category on day one when a list has been imported from a spreadsheet where the email column was optional.

Who else in your office needs an account

Fewer people than you would think. One person can run this; a second is useful mainly so that somebody can still approve a certificate when the first is on site. Approving documents and changing requirements are separate permissions, so a site manager can be given the first without the second — the roles and what each can do sets out which is which.

If one of your jobs carries stricter insurance terms than the rest, that is worth setting up in the first week too rather than retrofitting — projects and per-job requirements is a short read and the assignments are easier to make while the list is small. Your subcontractors never need an account, and there is no seat cost attached to them. They receive a link and upload against it, which is the whole of their involvement. What the two plan numbers actually count is the other half of that. That also means an import of 5,000 subcontractors costs nothing in seats — the meter is on your own people.