Subcontractor Insurance and Lien Waiver Checker

The evidence

Score: 32 out of 100

• No opening found
• 37 pay or would pay
• 379 people describe it
• 56% hit it at least weekly
• 31.6K upvotes on their posts

No small contractor asked for it; off-form lien waivers in 12 states create legal liability, and SubDoc costs $20.

In their words

I'm tracking which subcontractors have current insurance, which licenses are about to expire, and who's waiting on a payment, all across three different spreadsheets and a messy inbox.

r/Businessowners on Reddit

Chasing down subcontractors for updated insurance certificates every few months. They expire at different times, half of them ignore emails, and I end up with a folder of PDFs where half are outdated.

r/SideProject on Reddit

a GC is trying to argue over a clerical error on a lien waiver from our January pay app…. January… that they’re just now looking at.

r/ConstructionManagers on Reddit

The tools that already cover it

• SubDoc: AI reads standard insurance certificates, tracks W-9 and licenses, sends expiry alerts. Its 'payment hold' is a QuickBooks or Sage file export. No lien waivers seen. Founder-led, 49 blog posts, active on Reddit.
• Certificial: Insurance certificates only. No lien waiver, W-9, license or payment gate on its site.
• Billy: Its own site lists insurance, W-9, license, lien waivers and payment gating, with Procore sync. Sales-led, aimed at mid-size builders.
• Levelset (Procore): State templates and waiver collection before payment for builders. No insurance checks seen.
• Procore: SubDoc's guide says its compliance module needs manual entry of insurance data and a full Procore license.
• TrustLayer: Tracks insurance, W-9s and licenses and pitches 'compliance before payment'. Sales-led. No lien waivers on its site.
• Knowify: Job-costing suite. Pricing page shows no lien waiver or sub compliance feature.
• Contractor Foreman and JobTread: Small builders pay for whole-business suites, not point tools. No lien waiver or sub compliance feature on either pricing page.

How it was challenged

• Demand is vendor-made: 8 of 11 sub-compliance posts come from SubDoc and CrewSafety founders, tool builders or a brand account; 55 at least weekly pains are mostly generic admin.
• The 'adjacent tools people pay for' proof is hollow: CrewSafety's 3 mentions are its own founder promoting it, and the $1 500 a month Procore figure is second-hand from a vendor.
• SubDoc is free for 3 vendors and $20 for 100; its own guide tells builders with 1 to 20 subs to use free tools, so $99 is hard to sell.
• Wrong waiver forms are legally weak: statutes in 12 states invalidate off-form waivers, so one bad template could leave a customer exposed to a sub's lien and double payment.
• Billy already sells the exact bundle (insurance, W-9, license, lien waivers, payment gating) to mid-size builders; SubDoc needs only a waiver feature to close the gap.

The pain point it solves: Subcontractor Compliance Gaps

General contractors struggle to manually track subcontractor insurance, licenses, certifications, and compliance documents, risking expired credentials, blocked payments, and audit failures.

General contractors

Where they talk

• r/GeneralContractor
• r/Construction
• r/ConstructionManagers
• r/Contractor
• r/govcon
• r/SafetyProfessionals
• r/estimators
• r/Businessowners

Tools they use today

• Excel
• Procore
• ISNetworld
• Avetta
• Google Sheets
• LinkedIn
• SharePoint
• ACME

Why those fall short

• Bank already has transaction records but still demands per-contractor proof
• fees are expensive and hit-or-miss for irregular small jobs
• contractors lack skills, high turnover, drown internal resources
• read-only access blocks downloads into takeoff software; VDI installs fail for subs and suppliers
• no data on revenue timelines or flowdown tracking