THE CLEANING AUTHORITY

The Cleaning Authority franchise agreement requires general liability insurance on an occurrence form at $1,000,000 each occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate — and it specifies that the policy must include lost-key coverage and third-party dishonesty coverage.

The named insured on your certificate is your own legal business entity — the LLC or corporation you operate through. The Cleaning Authority, Inc. is the franchisor. The agreement requires you to name the franchisor and its affiliates, officers, directors, shareholders, and employees as additional insured, with a waiver of subrogation in their favor.

That satisfies your franchisor. Here is where the requirement ends — and where the limits you choose decide whether you are actually protected.

The franchisor entity is The Cleaning Authority, Inc., an Authority Brands company. The 2025 franchise agreement (Section 9.1 / Item 8) requires you to name the franchisor and its affiliates, officers, directors, shareholders, and employees as additional insured, with a waiver of subrogation. A waiver of subrogation is a promise from your insurer not to pursue those parties 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. Unusually, the agreement specifies that this policy must include lost-key coverage and third-party dishonesty coverage — recognizing that your cleaners hold keys and work unsupervised in customers' homes.

Employee Dishonesty / Fidelity coverage with a Client's Property Endorsement, covering theft by employees of client property and funds. This is the crime coverage, and it is required — but the agreement does not state a limit. That blank is the most important number in your whole program, and it is left to you.

Automobile Liability on owned vehicles. The agreement does not state a specific limit, deferring to state law — which means the real decision about auto limits is yours.

Workers' Compensation at state-required limits, plus Employers Liability at $1,000,000 across all three limits, with a waiver of subrogation. Workers' compensation pays medical bills and lost wages for an injured cleaner. Employers liability covers lawsuits outside that no-fault system.

Property Insurance covering your contents and business income, and including a lost-key / replacement-lock sublimit of $10,000, electronic data, and related perils.

All policies must name the franchisor and related parties as additional insured, carry the waiver of subrogation, and provide 30 days written notice before expiration of renewal or replacement coverage. The agreement also recommends, but does not require, an Employer Liability/EPLI policy at $1,000,000, Cyber Liability at $25,000, and a $1,000,000 commercial umbrella.

The Cleaning Authority understood this risk when it wrote the agreement. It requires third-party dishonesty coverage inside your general liability and a separate employee-dishonesty policy with a client's property endorsement. That is the correct setup — and worth understanding why, because most franchisees confuse it with a bond.

A janitorial or business-service bond is a fidelity bond that pays the client, but it usually pays only after the employee is criminally convicted of the theft, and the surety then seeks reimbursement from your business. The most common claim — a credible accusation with no proof — can trigger nothing. The coverage your agreement requires instead is a crime/employee-dishonesty policy with a client's property endorsement, which pays without a conviction and does not claw the money back. The agreement points you at the right instrument.

The problem is the blank. The FDD requires the coverage but states no limit, so a franchisee can buy a token amount and still be "compliant." A single missing watch or piece of jewelry, or a pattern of small thefts across a route, can run well into five figures. Set the limit deliberately. Rikor's benchmark is $250,000.

Set the form, too. 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. Cleaning theft is usually a quiet pattern noticed long after it starts — often during a deep clean, a move-out, or after an employee leaves — so loss discovered is the form that responds. Imagine a recurring client who, while preparing to move, finally inventories a jewelry box and realizes pieces have gone missing over a year of visits; a loss-discovered policy responds when that surfaces, while a loss-sustained policy taken out after a mid-year carrier switch could deny the earlier months.

The Cleaning Authority markets environmentally responsible products, but "green" does not mean inert. Any cleaning chemical — eco-friendly or not — can trigger a reaction in a sensitive person: a respiratory flare from a sprayed surface, a skin reaction, a child or pet affected by residue. When that happens, the claim is bodily injury, and where it lands depends on how your policy is written.

Bodily injury caused by your operations is what general liability is built for, so a reaction to a product your cleaner applied is generally a covered general liability claim. The complication is the pollution exclusion. Many standard general liability policies treat chemical releases and fumes as "pollutants" and exclude resulting injury. Whether a cleaning-product reaction is covered or excluded can come down to the exact wording of that exclusion on your specific policy.

For a brand built on a chemical-forward cleaning system, this is worth checking before a claim, not after. Confirm with your agent that bodily injury from your cleaning products is covered and not swept into a broad pollution exclusion. Where the exposure is real — heavy product use, sensitive environments, commercial accounts — a contractors pollution liability policy backs up the gap the standard pollution exclusion can create. The point is to know which side of the exclusion your product claims fall on while you can still fix it.

The Cleaning Authority franchisees do mostly residential work, but the brand also offers light commercial cleaning — offices, small facilities, light common-area work. Those accounts do not change what you do so much as what is required of you and how large a single loss can be.

Commercial clients and property managers issue their own certificate requirements. They commonly ask for higher limits than a residential program carries, plus specific endorsements — primary and non-contributory, a waiver of subrogation, their own entity named as additional insured, and sometimes a $1,000,000 or larger umbrella. A policy built to the residential minimum, with auto limits left to state minimums and no umbrella, can fail that certificate review and cost you the account before you start.

The exposure is also larger. A mistake in one home is a contained loss; a slip-and-fall by an office worker on a freshly mopped commercial floor, or water left running in a shared building, can affect more people and reach higher numbers. That is why the FDD recommends the $1,000,000 umbrella even though it does not require it — and why commercial accounts are usually the moment an umbrella stops being optional.

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 usually the largest line for a cleaning business, because the model is labor-heavy. 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 itself 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 a cleaning business, both lines are usually rated on payroll, so the number moves with your actual wages — and with any 1099 cleaners who could not show their own coverage.

A simple example. Say you estimate $220,000 in payroll when the policy starts and finish the year at $300,000 after a strong season. At a workers' compensation rate near $3.50 per $100 of payroll, the audit adds about $2,800 on that $80,000 difference. It usually arrives as a single lump sum a few months after the policy year closes.

For a residential cleaning franchise with ten to twenty employees, a complete program — general liability with the required endorsements, auto, workers' compensation, a real crime limit, EPLI, cyber, and an umbrella — commonly runs in the range of $8,000 to $14,000 per year. The labor-driven workers' compensation line and the employment exposure are what make a cleaning program cost more than the bare general liability number suggests.

Subcontractor certificates are the variable most likely to surprise you at audit. Most cleaning franchisees bring in overflow help at some point, and an undocumented 1099 cleaner 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 →

The Cleaning Authority's FDD names more of the right coverages than most cleaning agreements — lost key, third-party dishonesty, client's property, property insurance. The work for experienced operators is to put real limits on the coverages the FDD left blank or set low, and to carry the ones it only recommends. The recommendations below are Rikor's baselines for a newer franchisee, calibrated to your headcount and revenue.

Set the crime / employee-dishonesty limit at $250,000 — on a Loss Discovered form. The FDD requires this coverage but states no limit. That blank is the single most important number in the program. Set it deliberately at $250,000, keep the Client's Property Endorsement the FDD requires, and confirm the Loss Discovered form so a theft pattern found after a deep clean, a move-out, or an employee's departure is still covered.

Raise lost-key coverage above the $10,000 property sublimit. The agreement requires lost-key coverage and sets a $10,000 sublimit on the property policy. Re-keying a single multi-unit building can exceed that. If you hold master keys or access fobs for condos, offices, or larger residential properties, raise the lost-key limit to match the buildings you actually service.

Carry EPLI — the FDD only recommends it. A high-turnover, in-home cleaning workforce is the textbook employment-practices exposure: wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, wage claims. The FDD recommends $1,000,000 but does not require it. Carry standalone EPLI — Rikor's baseline is $250,000 for a newer franchisee, scaling toward $500,000 to $1,000,000 as you pass ten employees or $750,000 in revenue.

Cyber at $250,000, not the recommended $25,000. The FDD recommends only $25,000. Online booking and stored payment data make the real exposure larger. Rikor recommends $250,000 for a newer franchisee, scaling with revenue.

Care, Custody & Control / Bailee coverage for accidental damage. The client's property endorsement covers theft; it does not cover accidental damage to a customer's belongings, which the standard general liability care-custody-control exclusion removes. Carry it at a $150,000 baseline.

Real auto limits — $1,000,000, not the state minimum. The FDD defers auto to state law, which can leave you at minimal limits while your cleaners drive between homes all day. Carry $1,000,000 combined single limit with hired and non-owned coverage.

Umbrella — driven by your exposure. The FDD recommends a $1,000,000 umbrella but does not require it, and an umbrella adds a layer of limit above your general liability, auto, and employers liability. For mostly residential cleaning, the realistic worst case usually sits inside your primary limits. The umbrella becomes necessary as you take light-commercial accounts that require it on the certificate, run a larger fleet, or take on facility work where a single premises injury can be severe. Size it to the commercial work you actually take on.