Commercial Cleaner Insurance

The Night-Shift Problem

Most commercial cleaning happens when nobody else is in the building — after close, before open, weekends. That's precisely what makes it different to insure than almost any other trade: your crew is alone, unsupervised, with full access to a building full of someone else's property, and there's no client walking through to catch a problem in real time. Underwriters price commercial cleaning around that exposure specifically, not around the cleaning itself.

What a Property Manager's Contract Actually Demands

General Liability, Usually $1M/$2M Minimum

The floor for most commercial contracts. Covers the standard stuff — a wet floor sign wasn't up in time and someone slips, a chemical reaction damages flooring, a piece of equipment is knocked over and breaks something expensive. Larger facilities and government buildings often push the requirement to $2M/$4M.

The Janitorial Bond

Different from insurance — a bond is a guarantee to the client that if your crew steals or the contract isn't fulfilled, they get made whole. Facility managers ask for this specifically because of the after-hours access issue above. Bond amounts typically run $5,000 to $25,000 depending on the size of the account. Still not clear on how this differs from your GL policy? See our guide to actually getting bonded before you bid.

Blanket Additional Insured + Waiver of Subrogation

These two travel together. The property owner wants to be named on your policy (additional insured) and wants your carrier to agree not to come after them if something goes wrong on their property (waiver of subrogation). A blanket endorsement covers every building you service without adding each one by name — critical once you're running more than a handful of accounts.

Employee Dishonesty

This is the coverage that directly answers the night-shift problem. If a crew member is accused of taking something from an unattended office, this is what responds — protecting the client's trust in you and your business's reputation in one move.

Primary & Non-Contributory Language

Larger commercial and institutional contracts often require your policy to pay first, before any coverage the building owner carries. It's boilerplate to a carrier, but it's frequently a deal-breaker line item in the contract if your policy doesn't include it.

Multi-Site Accounts Change the Math

If you're servicing five office suites under one management company versus five unrelated one-off homes, your risk profile — and your certificate workload — looks completely different. Multi-site commercial accounts often justify higher GL limits from the start, since one incident at one site can trigger claims that reach across the whole contract relationship with that property manager. See our cost breakdown for how account count and limits actually move the number.

Getting the Certificate Out Fast

Facility managers rarely give much notice — a contract starts Monday and they need the COI Friday afternoon. Once you're bound with us, certificates are issued instantly, with the additional insured and waiver language already built in so there's no back-and-forth before you can start the account.