How to track subcontractor COI expiry dates
Updated September 2026
Short answer
Record four things for every subcontractor — insurer, policy number, expiry date and who holds the document — then set a reminder 30 days before expiry that goes to the subcontractor as well as to you. The chase, not the tracking, is what actually fails: most lapsed COIs are lapsed because nobody asked for the new one early enough.
Why COIs lapse even when someone is tracking them
Almost every firm that has this problem is already tracking the dates. The spreadsheet exists, the dates are in it, and somebody looks at it. What breaks is the step afterwards: the admin sees that Alpha Roofing expires in three weeks, emails their office, gets no reply, gets busy, and the date passes.
The failure is not visibility. It is that chasing a document held by someone outside your organisation is slow, repetitive work that nobody is measured on. Any method you choose has to reduce that work, not just display the date.
What to record for each subcontractor
Keep it to the fields you will actually maintain. Insurer name, policy number, coverage type (general liability, workers' compensation, auto), the expiry date, the subcontractor's contact email, and a copy of the certificate itself.
Two fields matter more than people expect. The contact email should be the person who holds the policy, not the site manager — chasing through an intermediary adds days. And coverage type matters because a subcontractor can be current on one policy and lapsed on another, which a single expiry date hides.
When to chase
Thirty days before expiry is the practical first ask. It is long enough for a broker to issue a renewal certificate and short enough that the subcontractor takes it seriously. A second reminder at seven days catches the ones who filed the first email.
Send the first request to the subcontractor directly, not to yourself. A reminder that lands in your inbox creates work; one that lands in theirs creates the document.
Where a spreadsheet stops working
A spreadsheet handles ten subcontractors comfortably. Past roughly thirty, three problems appear: nobody notices when a row was last checked, the conditional formatting only turns red once someone opens the file, and renewed policies get overwritten so you lose the history an auditor asks for.
The point at which people move is usually not volume — it is the first time a lapsed COI is discovered by a client rather than by them.
Common questions
- How far in advance should I ask for a renewed COI?
- Thirty days is the practical standard. Brokers can usually issue a renewal certificate within a week, so thirty days leaves room for one round of chasing without the date getting close.
- Should the reminder go to me or to the subcontractor?
- Both, but the subcontractor's copy is the one that matters. A reminder to yourself creates a task; a reminder to the person holding the policy can produce the document without you doing anything.
- What do I do if a COI expires before the renewal arrives?
- Most contracts treat working without current insurance as a breach, so the usual answer is that the subcontractor stops work until the certificate is produced. That is exactly why the thirty-day ask matters — it keeps you out of that decision.
Let the dates chase themselves
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