# Licence and insurance expiry tracker for contractors

Licence and insurance expiry tracker for contractors is a SaaS idea for small building, electrical and cleaning firms that use subcontractors, priced to test at $29 a month for up to 25 people. A subcontractor’s insurance lapses and nobody notices until a site audit or an accident. With it, contractors keep every licence, insurance certificate and training record for their crew and subcontractors, with reminders before anything lapses.

_Published 19 Oct 2026. A starting point we wrote, not market research: run the 7-day test before you build._

## What problem does it solve?

A subcontractor’s insurance lapses and nobody notices until a site audit or an accident. Certificates live in email attachments and old folders.

**Why now:** Bigger clients ask for proof of insurance and training before work starts, and small firms struggle to keep it current.

## What do they use today?

Most firms keep a folder per subcontractor, or a spreadsheet of expiry dates that someone updates now and then. Renewals are chased by phone when a client or site manager asks for proof.

## How does it work?

The office sends each subcontractor a link, and they upload their insurance certificate and training records with the expiry dates. A reminder goes to the owner and to the person named before each expiry date arrives, so a lapse is never a surprise. On a new job, the owner sees at a glance who is cleared for that site, and exports the records for a client audit.

## What goes in the first version?

- Upload certificates with their expiry dates
- Reminders to the owner and the person named before expiry
- A link subcontractors use to upload their own documents
- Who is cleared for each job site, at a glance
- An export for a client audit

## Who pays, and how much?

- **Who pays:** Small building, electrical and cleaning firms that use subcontractors
- **Price to test:** $29 a month for up to 25 people

A price that covers a set number of people suits a small firm that counts its own crew and its subcontractors together. It replaces the folders and spreadsheets the office keeps for the same records.

## How to test it in 7 days

1. Ask in r/Construction how firms track subcontractor insurance.
2. Interview five owners about their last lapsed certificate.
3. Offer a free import of one firm’s documents.

## Where to find the first customers

- r/Construction
- Trade associations
- Insurance brokers who work with contractors

## What are the risks?

- Rules vary by country and trade, so keep document types flexible.
- Firms may expect links to their accounting tools.

## How to build it on shipanysaas

5 of the parts it needs are already in the kit, the phone app with the All-in plan. Get the kit, open it in Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, and paste the starting prompt.

**Already in the kit:** Teams and roles, Billing, Emails, In-app notifications, Phone app with All-in

**You build:**

- Document uploads with expiry dates
- Reminder schedule
- Subcontractor upload links

[Get the kit](https://www.shipanysaas.com/pricing)

### The starting prompt

```text
You are in a fresh copy of the shipanysaas starter kit, a pnpm and Turborepo monorepo: the Next.js web app is in apps/web and the Supabase database, with its migrations, in apps/web/supabase; with the All-in plan, the Expo phone app is in apps/native. Help me build the first version of Licence and insurance expiry tracker for contractors.

Read AGENTS.md first, then the AGENTS.md in every folder you work in: the kit's rules there win over your defaults. When a skill in .agents/skills (also in .claude/skills and .cursor/skills) matches a task, use it.

## The product
- What it does: Contractors keep every licence, insurance certificate and training record for their crew and subcontractors, with reminders before anything lapses.
- Who pays: Small building, electrical and cleaning firms that use subcontractors
- Their problem: A subcontractor’s insurance lapses and nobody notices until a site audit or an accident. Certificates live in email attachments and old folders.
- Price to test: $29 a month for up to 25 people (a plan in apps/web/config/billing.config.ts)

## Build only this first version
1. Upload certificates with their expiry dates
2. Reminders to the owner and the person named before expiry
3. A link subcontractors use to upload their own documents
4. Who is cleared for each job site, at a glance
5. An export for a client audit

## Already in the kit: reuse it, never rebuild it
- Teams and roles: team accounts with members, roles and invitations
- Billing: Stripe or Lemon Squeezy subscriptions, per seat or usage-based, and one-off payments
- Emails: transactional email through Resend or Nodemailer
- In-app notifications: a notifications bell in the web app
- Phone app: an iPhone, iPad and Android app on the same backend (All-in plan)

## New code it needs
- Document uploads with expiry dates
- Reminder schedule
- Subcontractor upload links

## How to work
1. Plan first: list the database tables (with row-level security, so each team only sees its own rows), the pages and the server actions for the first feature. Then stop and wait for my OK.
2. Build one feature at a time with the kit's own UI and form components, with a migration for every schema change and user-facing text in the translation files.
3. After each feature, run the verification steps in AGENTS.md, fix what they find, and tell me what you built and what comes next.

## Rules
- Ask me before you add a dependency, delete a file, or change sign-in, billing or the admin panel.
- Leave the parts of the kit this product doesn't use as they are.
- If apps/native is not in your copy (the Starter plan), build the web app only.

Done when every first-version feature works for a signed-in team and the AGENTS.md checks pass.
```

### Guides for the parts it uses

- [Expo Supabase setup: one backend for your web and phone apps](https://www.shipanysaas.com/blog/expo-supabase-one-backend)
- [How to add Resend email to a Next.js + Supabase app](https://www.shipanysaas.com/blog/nextjs-supabase-resend-email)
- [How to add Stripe embedded checkout to a Next.js + Supabase app](https://www.shipanysaas.com/blog/nextjs-supabase-stripe-embedded-checkout)

## More ideas: Back office

- [Step-by-step procedures with read receipts](https://www.shipanysaas.com/saas-ideas/procedures-with-read-receipts): Small teams write procedures with photos once, staff confirm they’ve read them, and the owner sees who still needs training.
- [Client key register for cleaning and care companies](https://www.shipanysaas.com/saas-ideas/client-key-register): Staff sign client keys out and back with a phone scan, so the office knows who holds every key.
- [Supplier bank-detail change checks for small finance teams](https://www.shipanysaas.com/saas-ideas/supplier-bank-detail-checks): Small finance teams verify every supplier bank-detail change with a call-back and a second approver before anyone pays.

- [All SaaS ideas](https://www.shipanysaas.com/saas-ideas)
- [Try the free generator](https://www.shipanysaas.com/saas-ideas#generator)