Certificate of Insurance Tracking for Facilities Vendors

Certificate of insurance tracking means keeping, for every vendor who works in your buildings, a current certificate whose limits meet your contract, an endorsement that actually adds you as an additional insured when the contract requires it, and an expiry date someone is warned about before it passes. Collect the certificate before the first visit, record each policy's expiry date separately, and start chasing the renewal 30 days out.

The certificate itself proves less than most people assume, so start there.

The certificate is not the coverage

The standard US certificate is the ACORD 25. The current edition, 2025/12, opens with this, in capitals:

"THIS CERTIFICATE IS ISSUED AS A MATTER OF INFORMATION ONLY AND CONFERS NO RIGHTS UPON THE CERTIFICATE HOLDER."

And a few lines later:

"IMPORTANT: If the certificate holder is an ADDITIONAL INSURED, the policy(ies) must have ADDITIONAL INSURED provisions or be endorsed."

In plain terms: a box ticked on the certificate does not make you an additional insured. The policy does, through an endorsement. If your contract requires additional insured status, ask for the endorsement itself, commonly an ISO form such as CG 20 10 for ongoing operations or CG 20 37 for completed operations, and keep it with the certificate.

Courts do not always treat the disclaimer as the last word. In T-Mobile USA v. Selective Insurance (2019), the Washington Supreme Court answered a question from the Ninth Circuit this way: "an insurance company's agent who makes an authoritative representation binds the insurance company, even when that specific representation is transmitted via a certificate of insurance and accompanied by general disclaimers." That is one state's answer under its own law. It is a reason to keep every certificate you receive, not a reason to skip the endorsement.

What to check on every certificate

• Named insured matches the legal name on your contract, not a trade name or a parent company.
• Each policy's dates. General liability, auto, workers' compensation and umbrella usually expire on different days. Track each one.
• Limits meet what the contract requires, per occurrence and aggregate.
• Additional insured status, with the endorsement attached when the contract requires it.
• Description of operations covers the work the vendor actually does in your buildings.
• Certificate holder is your entity, with your address.
• Workers' compensation is in force in the state where the work happens.

What limits do facilities contracts ask for?

There is no universal number. Public owners publish their own requirements, and a few real examples show the usual range for building services work.

Two things worth noticing. Requirements scale with risk: the same college asks HVAC contractors for twice the general liability it asks of cleaners, and its cleaning row also requires $1M of environmental pollution liability. And the wording differs from document to document, so compare each certificate to its own contract, not to a house standard.

Workers' compensation is the one most often missed, because it is required by state law rather than set by your contract. Several states publish free lookups, such as Washington's Verify a Contractor, Tradesperson or Business and New York's employer coverage search. Check the vendor there, not only on the certificate.

How certificates lapse without anyone noticing

Public audits find the same thing again and again: the certificate was collected once, at onboarding, and never again.

• Wayne County, Michigan (2020). Auditors judgmentally selected 15 vendors with multi-year contracts. The county needed 41 certificates to cover those contract years and could produce 15, one per contract. Of those 15, "Twelve of the fifteen COI provided had expired." In a separate test of five contracts, only two vendors carried the coverage their contracts required, though management noted umbrella policies might cover some of the gap.
• New York City (2015). In a Comptroller's audit of a city department's professional services contracts, the department could not provide certificates covering the audit period for three of 18 contracts.

Neither audit proves a vendor was uninsured. They prove nobody could show they were insured, which is the position you are in on the day something goes wrong.

A tracking routine that holds up

1. Collect before the first visit. No certificate and endorsement, no badge, no keys and no work order.
2. Record each policy separately, with its own limit and expiry date, against the vendor's record.
3. Get warned 30 days out. That is enough time for a renewal certificate to arrive without a gap.
4. Decide in advance what an expired certificate stops. New work orders, site access, payment: write it down so nobody has to make the call on the day.
5. Check workers' comp on the state lookup at onboarding and at renewal.
6. Keep the history. Superseded certificates are evidence of what was in force on a given date. Do not overwrite them.

How MAFM tracks it

In MAFM, each vendor has a record that holds their contracts and certificates. The vendor's card shows a badge that reads Insurance Valid, changes to Insurance Expiring 30 days before the expiry date, and to Insurance Expired once it passes, so the status is visible to whoever is about to send that vendor a job. Contracts and certificates sit on the same record, so the answer to "were they covered on that date?" is one click away.

See how vendors fit into the rest of the operation on the operations page. If the contract also covers a lease, our guide to what to abstract from every lease covers the landlord side.

Frequently asked questions

What is a certificate of insurance?

It is a one-page summary, usually an ACORD 25 in the US, that lists a vendor's policies, limits and dates. It is information only: the ACORD 25 says it "CONFERS NO RIGHTS UPON THE CERTIFICATE HOLDER." The policy and its endorsements are what provide coverage.

How often should certificates of insurance be checked?

At onboarding, at every policy renewal, and whenever the contract changes. Policies on one certificate often expire on different dates, so track each expiry separately and start chasing renewals 30 days before each one.

Does being listed as certificate holder make you an additional insured?

No. The ACORD 25 itself says an additional insured must be provided by the policy or by an endorsement. Ask for the endorsement form and keep it with the certificate.

What insurance limits should facilities vendors carry?

It depends on the work and your contracts. Public examples for building services commonly ask for $1 million per occurrence of general liability, $1 million of auto liability, employers' liability, and an umbrella of $1 million or more, with higher limits for riskier trades like HVAC.

If vendor paperwork lives in email threads today, talk to an operator who tracks their own vendors on MAFM.