COVERALL

The Coverall franchise agreement requires general liability insurance on an occurrence form at $1,000,000 each occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate, a $5,000,000 umbrella above it, and a janitorial bond of at least $100,000.

The named insured on your certificate is your own legal business entity — the LLC or corporation you operate through. Coverall North America, Inc. is the franchisor, and the agreement requires you to name Coverall as additional insured on a primary and non-contributory basis, with a waiver of subrogation. The policy also may not exclude property in your care, custody, or control — because you clean inside other people's buildings.

That satisfies your franchisor. Here is where the requirement ends and your real exposure as a commercial janitorial operator begins.

The franchisor entity is **Coverall North America, Inc.** The 2025 franchise agreement (Item 8) requires you to name Coverall as additional insured on a primary and non-contributory basis, with a waiver of subrogation. A waiver of subrogation is a promise from your insurer not to pursue Coverall to recover money after it pays a claim.

What the agreement requires you to carry:

General Liability at $1,000,000 each occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate, on an occurrence form, primary and non-contributory. The policy may not contain a care, custody, or control exclusion — meaning it must cover damage to client property while it is in your control during cleaning.

Umbrella Liability of $5,000,000, written follow-form over your general liability. Follow-form means the umbrella covers the same things the policy beneath it covers, at a higher limit. A $5,000,000 umbrella is unusual for a cleaning business — it exists because commercial buildings concentrate a lot of value and a lot of people under one roof.

Automobile Liability at a minimum of $50,000, or the amount required by state law or by your customers — whichever is higher. The $50,000 figure is a floor, not a real-world limit.

Workers Compensation at state-required limits, plus Employers Liability at a $100,000-each-accident minimum. If you have no workers compensation covering owners, the agreement requires an on-the-job accident policy instead, with stated accidental-death, disability, and medical benefits.

Janitorial Bond of at least $100,000 — the fidelity coverage that responds to employee theft from a client. Coverall's Business Protection Plan offers an upgraded $1,000,000 crime policy in its place, which is the better instrument (more on that below).

All coverage must be written by an admitted carrier rated A- VII or better, with 30 days written notice of cancellation, non-renewal, or material change.

Coverall requires a janitorial bond of at least $100,000, and commercial customers often ask for a bond by name too. So the bond feels mandatory, and franchisees buy it and move on. The trouble is that a bond is not what most people think it is, and it is not the strongest protection available.

A janitorial bond is a fidelity bond — a three-party arrangement between a surety, your business, and your client. It is meant to pay the client if your employee steals from them. But it carries two traps that surface exactly when you need it. First, most janitorial bonds pay only after the employee is criminally *convicted* of the theft. The most common claim — a credible accusation with no proof, no charge, no conviction — can trigger nothing. Second, the surety expects to be reimbursed by your business after it pays. It behaves more like credit than coverage.

A third-party crime policy is insurance, not a bond. It pays for employee theft of a client's property without requiring a conviction, and it does not seek reimbursement from you. It is simply the better instrument for the same risk — which is why Coverall's own Business Protection Plan offers a $1,000,000 crime policy in place of the $100,000 bond. Where a customer's contract genuinely requires a "bond," you may need to satisfy that wording, but the protection you actually want behind it is the crime policy.

One more detail to specify: ask for the Loss Discovered form. A loss-sustained form covers a theft only if it both happened and was found during the same policy period; a loss-discovered form covers a theft found during the policy period no matter when it began. In commercial janitorial, where crews work after hours and theft is often discovered well after the fact, loss discovered is the form that still responds.

Commercial janitorial means working unsupervised inside someone else's building, often overnight, around their equipment, furnishings, and finishes. Damage happens — a chemical that etches a stone reception desk, a buffer that gouges a floor, water left running that reaches a server room. Two coverage issues decide whether you are protected.

The first is the care, custody, and control exclusion. Standard general liability policies remove coverage for property in your control or that you are working on when it is damaged. A building you are cleaning all night is, in a real sense, in your control. Coverall's agreement addresses this directly by prohibiting the care-custody-control exclusion your policy may not contain it. That is a smart requirement, and you should confirm your policy actually complies, because many off-the-shelf janitorial policies still carry the exclusion.

The second is severity. A mistake in a commercial building is rarely small. Water that reaches multiple suites, a fire-suppression head knocked loose, or damage to a tenant's specialized equipment can run into six or seven figures and pull in multiple parties at once. That is the reason Coverall requires a $5,000,000 umbrella — not as a formality, but because a single after-hours loss in the wrong building can exceed your primary limits quickly. Carry it, and confirm it follows form over your general liability so it actually responds to the claims your operation creates.

Coverall operates on a master-and-unit structure: regional support centers (master franchises) sell and support the unit franchise businesses that actually clean the accounts. That structure creates the most common and most dangerous coverage confusion in commercial janitorial the assumption that someone else's policy covers you.

It does not. As a unit franchisee, you are an independent business. The master franchise's insurance protects the master franchise. Coverall's corporate coverage protects Coverall. Neither one is your liability policy, your bond or crime policy, your workers' compensation, or your auto coverage. When a claim arises from your work — a theft on your account, damage in a building you clean, an injury to your worker — it runs against your program, named to your business entity.

This matters most around two things. First, additional-insured status: your agreement requires you to name Coverall as additional insured, but a commercial customer will also require their entity named on your certificate, and possibly the master named too. Get the naming right for each account. Second, workers' compensation: the agreement requires it, and if you operate without WC covering yourself as an owner, it requires the on-the-job accident policy instead. Do not assume the master carries any of this for you.

The honest answer is that your premium depends on details specific to your operation. What you can understand is how the number is built and the part that catches franchisees at year-end.

Workers' compensation is a major line for any cleaning business. Carriers price it with a formula: your payroll divided by 100, multiplied by your state's rate for the cleaning classification (NCCI code 9014), multiplied by your experience modification. The rate is set by your state's rating bureau, not the carrier — the insurer applies the state's number.

Both workers' compensation and general liability are auditable. An audit is the carrier's year-end review that compares what you estimated when the policy started against what actually happened, then adjusts the premium up or down. For commercial cleaning, general liability is often rated on gross receipts, so the number moves with your actual revenue and with any 1099 cleaners who could not show their own coverage.

A simple example on the revenue basis. Say you estimate $200,000 in cleaning revenue when the policy starts and, after adding two accounts, finish the year at $320,000. If your general liability is rated near $10 per $1,000 of revenue for commercial janitorial, the audit adds about $1,200 on that $120,000 difference. Workers' compensation runs the same way on payroll. Both bills usually arrive as a single lump sum a few months after the policy year closes.

For a commercial janitorial unit with a small crew, a complete program — general liability with no care-custody-control exclusion, the required $5,000,000 umbrella, a real auto limit, workers' compensation, and a crime policy — commonly runs in the range of $7,000 to $15,000 per year, with the umbrella and commercial requirements pushing the number up as you add accounts. The franchisor's Business Protection Plan bundles several of these, but compare its limits to what your customers actually require before relying on it.

Subcontractor certificates are the variable most likely to surprise you at audit. Many janitorial operators bring in extra cleaners, and an undocumented 1099 worker becomes your payroll at year-end. Rikor's subcontractor compliance monitoring tool tracks those certificates in real time so a lapse surfaces before the audit, not after. [See how subcontractor compliance works →](/subcontractor-compliance/) Estimate revenue and payroll realistically, and if you grow fast mid-year, ask your carrier for a mid-term adjustment so the increase spreads across installments instead of landing as a lump sum.

Coverall's FDD requires several strong things — a $5,000,000 umbrella, no care-custody-control exclusion, and a crime instrument — but it sets some floors far too low and points you at a bond when a crime policy is better. The recommendations below are Rikor's baselines, calibrated to real commercial work.

Upgrade the janitorial bond to a $1,000,000 third-party crime policy — on a Loss Discovered form. The agreement requires a $100,000 bond, and the franchisor's Business Protection Plan offers a $1,000,000 crime policy in its place. Take the crime policy: it pays without a conviction, does not seek reimbursement from you, and at $1,000,000 it actually matches the value sitting in the buildings you clean. Keep whatever bond wording a specific customer contract demands, but make the crime policy the real protection.

Raise auto from the $50,000 floor to $1,000,000. The FDD's $50,000 auto minimum is far below a real claim. Carry $1,000,000 combined single limit with hired and non-owned coverage, since your crews drive to accounts.

Raise employers liability from $100,000 to $1,000,000. The FDD floor is $100,000. Employers liability answers a serious worker-injury lawsuit outside workers' compensation. Raise it to $1,000,000.

Carry EPLI — the FDD does not require it. A janitorial workforce, often part-time and high-turnover, is a real employment-practices exposure. Rikor recommends standalone EPLI starting at $250,000, scaling with headcount.

Cyber at $250,000. The FDD does not require it. Online billing, customer data, and funds-transfer activity create a breach exposure. Rikor recommends $250,000 for a newer operator.

Confirm the no-care-custody-control compliance — and an adequate limit within it. The FDD prohibits the CCC exclusion, but confirm your actual policy complies and that the coverage limit fits the equipment and finishes in the buildings you clean.

The $5,000,000 umbrella is appropriately sized — keep it. Commercial buildings concentrate severity, so this is one requirement that matches the exposure. Do not let a cheaper quote quietly drop or sublimit it; confirm it follows form over your primary lines.