COI tracking for landscaping

The vendors landscaping companies rely on

A full-service landscaping operation subs out the higher-risk and specialized work:

• Tree removal and arborist crews (the highest-risk sub you’ll hire)
• Irrigation and low-voltage lighting installers
• Hardscape, masonry, and retaining-wall crews
• Grading, excavation, and drainage subs
• Chemical / pesticide application vendors

The specific risk

The signature landscaping risk is tree work: a limb or a felled trunk landing on a house, a car, or a person produces some of the largest claims in the trade. Add equipment — mowers throwing debris, skid steers, chippers — and pesticide overspray onto a neighbor’s property, and the loss potential is real. If a tree sub you hired is uninsured when their cut goes wrong, the claim chases your general liability. Meanwhile, commercial clients require you to prove your own coverage, so a lapsed certificate on your side can cost you the contract at renewal.

A tree crew you subbed out drops a large limb onto a client’s roof — a five-figure property-damage claim. You go to file against the sub’s insurance and find their general liability lapsed a month ago. Because they were on your job under your name, the claim chases your policy instead. Meanwhile, the HOA that hired you asks for your own current COI at renewal, and if yours is stale, the contract is at risk too.

Insurance requirements that matter

Coverage a landscaping company both requires of its subs and is asked to carry for commercial clients:

Common mistakes to avoid

• Holding tree and hardscape subs to lower limits than the risk of their work actually warrants.
• Forgetting you also need to keep your own certificate current for the commercial clients who require it.
• Not getting named additional insured on a high-risk sub’s policy before they start.

Automate it with CoverGuard

Between the subs you hire and the clients you invoice, the certificate paperwork cuts both ways — and it’s easy to let a tree sub’s expired GL slip through. CoverGuard reads every ACORD 25 with AI, flags a sub whose coverage dropped below your requirement, and chases the renewal automatically, so you’re always covered on both ends.

For the fundamentals, read the complete COI tracking guide or the step-by-step guide to tracking subcontractor COIs. You can also generate recommended requirements with the free COI requirements checklist tool.