What your subcontractors actually have to do

There is no account for them to forget

You request a certificate from a subcontractor and they get an email with a link. The page carries your company's name and asks only for the outstanding COI. They take a photo of the certificate or attach the PDF their agent sent, and that is the end of their involvement.

No password to set. No app to install. No account to be locked out of eleven months later when the renewal is due and the person who set it up has left. It opens on a phone, because that is where it will be opened — usually in a truck, often one-handed.

Because the link is unusual, some subs reasonably wonder whether it is a phishing attempt. We wrote a page for them explaining how to check it is genuine — including telling them to phone you on the number they already have rather than any number in the email. You can send it alongside your first request. Every workspace can collect, scan and store COIs today. Completing a human review in the app is in early access: for now it is open only to our authorized pilot organization and its configured reviewer.

The other thing that stalls a first request is a sub who does not have a current certificate and is not sure how to get one. That is a two-line email to their own agent, and the page that spells out what to ask for is written for them rather than for you — sending it is usually faster than explaining it.

What the page shows them

• Only the outstanding COI. Where reviewer access is available, an approved current certificate drops off the list, so a sub is not asked to send the same one again.
• Your name and your branding, not ours — it should look like it came from the contractor they are working for, because it did.
• A confirmation in place, once the COI uploads. The tile confirms that the file arrived; it does not mean a human review has happened.

Request links are scoped to COIs. You can regenerate a link if it was lost, or revoke one if it went to the wrong person. W-9, license, safety-card, and custom-document requests are not currently supported.

What happens when they don't reply

Which is most of the time, at first — not out of obstruction, but because a renewal certificate is nobody's most urgent job until it is.

For an approved current COI, the workspace can schedule reminders from supported recorded expiry dates, by default at 90, 60, 30 and 7 days before expiry. General liability, workers compensation, and auto dates can run on their own timetables; blank dates remain missing rather than copied from another row. These recorded dates are not carrier confirmation that coverage is in force. You can pick another cadence from 90, 60, 30, 14, 7, 3 or 1 days out and choose who the schedule targets. Actual email delivery depends on the configured provider. Every workspace can collect, scan and store COIs today. Completing a human review in the app is in early access: for now it is open only to our authorized pilot organization and its configured reviewer.

The schedule can escalate an unanswered COI reminder to your team after 3 days. Email delivery depends on the configured provider. Text reminders are currently unavailable.

This is the one requirement the certificate itself is worst at delivering — the ACORD 25's cancellation clause promises you almost nothing in practice, which 30 days notice of cancellation explains. Running the countdown yourself is the part you can actually make real.

When what they send is wrong

When reviewer access is available, the reviewer can reject a COI with a reason and issue a fresh upload link. Rejected COIs stay recoverable for at least 3 days in case the rejection was the mistake; after that grace period, a scheduled purge deletes the stored file before removing its record and retries later if storage deletion fails. Every workspace can collect, scan and store COIs today. Completing a human review in the app is in early access: for now it is open only to our authorized pilot organization and its configured reviewer.

What this does not solve

None of this makes a subcontractor produce insurance they do not have. If no acceptable document arrives, reminders establish that the paperwork remains unresolved sooner; they do not establish that the subcontractor is uninsured.

What it does remove is the part that was costing you: remembering who owes what, noticing a date before it passes, and writing the chasing emails. That is most of the work, and it is all of the part that gets dropped when a job gets busy.