Licensing: what to check before you bid

The invitation lands Tuesday and the bid is due Friday. The job is one county over, the property manager wants your license number and a certificate of insurance attached to the proposal, and the last time you thought about your license was whenever the renewal notice came.

Whether your trade needs a license at all is a longer question with its own guide. This is the narrower one: is my license in good standing, does this job's location add something, and does the bid itself have to carry paperwork.

Look yourself up the way a customer would

Where a state licenses your trade, its board almost always publishes a free public lookup. Search your own name and your business name, and read the record the way an owner would — that is exactly where a property manager or a general contractor checks you before award. Where licensing sits with cities and counties instead, the lookup is the local one, and it may not be online at all.

Four things on that record decide whether you can bid:

• Status and expiration. Active, inactive, delinquent, expired and suspended are not interchangeable words, and some states let you hold a license "inactive" in a way that does not permit contracting. Renewal cycles differ by state and often by license type — annual and biennial are both common — so read the date rather than assuming last year's rhythm holds.
• Classification. A license covers named scopes of work. Bidding a job that runs outside your classification is the same problem as bidding with no license. If the invitation mixes trades, ask your board which parts you may carry yourself and which need a licensed sub.
• The name on the record. Licenses are issued to a specific person or a specific legal entity. If you were licensed as a sole proprietor and later formed an LLC, the license may not follow the LLC — many states treat that as a new licensee with its own application. Ask your board in writing before you put the new entity name on a proposal.
• The qualifying individual. Where a state licenses a business through a named person — a qualifying individual or responsible managing officer — that person leaving usually starts a clock to name a replacement, and the board sets the window.

Ask what the job's location adds

Your state license is not a passport to every jurisdiction inside the state.

A different city or county. Many cities and counties require their own business license or business tax registration to work inside their limits, separate from any state contractor license, and some want it before you may bid rather than before you may start. Call the finance or business tax office where the work is and ask three things: do I need a business license from you, is it due before I bid or before I start, and how long does it take to issue?

A different state. Reciprocity is patchy. Some states hold agreements with named neighbors for named trades; plenty of pairs have none. Where it exists, it commonly waives an examination rather than the whole application, so you may still be filing, paying and waiting. Treat "I heard those two states reciprocate" as a rumor until the board that would license you confirms it for your trade and classification. Out-of-state work can also mean registering with the secretary of state and picking up a payroll and sales tax footprint — worth a call to your CPA the same week, not after the first invoice.

Your bond and insurance are license conditions too

Several license types require a surety bond — a guarantee that pays your customer if you fail to perform — kept continuously in force. If it lapses or the surety cancels, boards commonly treat the license as suspended or subject to suspension until it is restored, and nothing about the certificate on your wall changes. Ask your agent whether the bond is current, then check what the board's record shows.

Insurance splits in two, and mixing them up is how a bid gets rejected before anyone reads your price:

• What your license requires. General liability minimums, and workers' comp or a filed exemption if you have no employees. Exemption filings expire in some states.
• What this customer's contract requires. Usually higher limits, plus wording your agent has to add to the policy: naming the customer as an additional insured, a waiver of subrogation (your insurer gives up its right to come after the customer later), or primary and non-contributory wording (your policy pays first, before theirs). None of it is automatic, some of it costs money, and none of it is instant.

Before you request the certificate, ask the customer in writing who goes on it as certificate holder and additional insured, spelled the way they want it. A certificate made out to the management company when the contract is with the association is a redo.

What has to be in the envelope on bid day

Holding something and showing it at bid time are two different requirements. The bid documents tell you the second one.

• Government work. Public agencies commonly require registration in their procurement system before a bid is accepted, and federal work runs through SAM.gov registration. Bid bonds, prevailing wage acknowledgments and specific forms may all be due with the bid itself.
• Minority-, women- or veteran-owned business programs. These are certifications issued by a certifying agency, not a box you check. If a solicitation carries a participation goal, you either hold the certification already or you are looking for a certified partner.
• HOAs and property managers. Expect to attach your license number, a certificate of insurance and often a W-9.
• Residential. Several states require your license number on written estimates, contracts and advertising, and some require specific contract notices for residential work. Your board publishes what yours wants.

Two of these take weeks, so start the day the bid lands

The lookup takes a minute. A certificate of insurance is usually a same-day or next-day request to your agent. The two that will not compress are a new local business license and any certification program — ask the issuing office for its current processing time rather than guessing, because it varies by jurisdiction and by season.

Here is the whole check, and who to call for each part.

The numbers that have to stay current

Your license number, bond details and insurance information end up on estimates, contracts and submittal packages, and the failure is quiet: an old number sits in a template long after the record changed. Set them once in DoneQuote as saved business details, so a renewal is one edit and the number a customer reads is the one your board would confirm.