BUDGET BLINDS

The Budget Blinds franchise disclosure document requires general liability insurance at $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 in the aggregate, a commercial umbrella of $1,000,000, general casualty insurance covering the full replacement cost of your vehicle, and employment practices liability insurance. The Item 7 footnotes confirm the liability policies must be written on an occurrence basis with a combined single limit for bodily injury, death, or property damage.

The named insured on your certificate is your own legal business entity. BUDGET BLINDS, LLC must be named as an additional insured under each policy the franchisor requires. Occurrence basis means the policy covers a loss based on when the event happened, not when the claim is filed — important when a product you installed fails months later. Combined single limit means one limit applies to any mix of bodily injury and property damage in a single event.

That is what the agreement establishes. Here is what an in-home window-covering business actually faces — starting with the product that fails after you have gone.

The franchisor entity is BUDGET BLINDS, LLC, a California limited liability company with its principal business address at 19000 MacArthur Boulevard, Suite 100, Irvine, California 92612. It is part of Home Franchise Concepts. The 2025 franchise disclosure document, Item 8, sets out the following required coverages.

General Liability at $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 in the aggregate, written on an occurrence basis. General liability covers accidental bodily injury and property damage you cause through your operations and your finished work. For a brand that drills into walls and mounts products that stay there, the products and completed operations portion of this policy is the part that matters most.

Commercial Umbrella of $1,000,000. An umbrella adds a layer of limit on top of your general liability and other liability coverages for a claim that exceeds the primary limit. Budget Blinds requires it outright, which is unusual for a low-hazard install trade — and a signal worth taking seriously.

General Casualty (Vehicle) covering the full replacement cost of your vehicle. This is physical-damage coverage on the vehicle itself. Note that the FDD frames this around the vehicle's replacement cost rather than stating a separate auto-liability limit; confirm your auto liability limits with your franchise representative and your state's minimums.

Employment Practices Liability (EPLI). EPLI covers claims by employees — wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment. Budget Blinds requires it, which most install-trade FDDs do not.

BUDGET BLINDS, LLC must be named as an additional insured under each required policy. The FDD also notes that a contractor's license and bond are required only in states that require a contractor's license to perform the work.

This is the exposure most window-covering franchisees underestimate, because the job looked finished the day the van pulled away. Budget Blinds installs roughly 50,000 treatments a week across the system — cordless lifts, motorized shades, plantation shutters, heavy draperies. Each one keeps operating on the customer's wall long after the install. When one fails and someone is hurt or property is damaged, the claim is a completed-operations claim — harm caused by your finished work after you have left.

Here is the part that catches people. The standard general liability policy contains a "your work" exclusion that can remove coverage for damage to the product you installed itself. If a motor burns out, that is usually the manufacturer's product liability — not yours. But when your installation is part of the failure — a shutter that pulls its anchors because it was not mounted into a stud, a motorized shade wired into a circuit it overloaded — the claim lands on your completed-operations coverage, and the strength of that coverage decides the outcome. This is exactly why Budget Blinds requires the products-and-completed-operations portion of general liability and writes it on an occurrence basis: an occurrence policy covers a loss based on when the failure happened, even if the claim arrives long after the install year closed.

The protection is to confirm your general liability includes robust products-and-completed-operations coverage and that the "your work" exclusion has not been broadened to strip it. Confirm it before the claim — a completed-operations gap is invisible on a certificate.

Before the product can fail later, the install itself has to go right — and a Budget Blinds tech is drilling into walls, handling glass, and working around finished trim, furniture, and flooring in someone's home every day. The forensic review of this brand confirms installation requires drilling and fastening to walls and windows. 

That is real, everyday property-damage exposure, and it is where general liability earns its keep on the front end.

If a tech cracks a windowpane, splinters custom trim, drops a drill on a hardwood floor, or drills into a hidden pipe or wire, that is accidental property damage to the customer's home — the kind of sudden, accidental loss general liability is built to pay. The exposure per job is usually modest, but with high install volume it is frequent. There is one common gap to watch: damage to the customer's belongings that your tech was directly handling or moving — a blind set down on an antique table that scratches it — can fall under the care, custody, and control exclusion, which removes coverage for property in your control during the work.

The protection is to confirm your general liability covers install-day property damage without a broad exclusion for the structure you are working on, and to add a care, custody, and control endorsement so damage to the customer's belongings your tech was handling can be covered. The fix is inexpensive relative to a single damaged hardwood floor or custom window.

A Budget Blinds measure-and-install visit puts one person inside a customer's home, often alone, moving room to room — exactly the setting where a customer later reports a missing item. Most visits end without incident, and window-covering work is briefer and lower-access than, say, a multi-day project. But the in-home access is real, and it is worth understanding what does and does not cover a theft allegation.

General liability does not cover employee theft. Theft by your own installer is dishonesty, not an accident, and the standard policy excludes it. Budget Blinds does not require a crime policy, so this protection is yours to decide on. The right product, if you carry it, is a third-party commercial crime policy with a theft-of-customer-property endorsement — third-party meaning it covers theft of the customer's property, not just your own. A crime policy generally pays on a reasonable proof-of-loss standard and does not seek to recover the money from you afterward.

For a brief, single-room install visit, the in-home theft exposure is lower than for trades whose workers are alone in a home for hours or days. Rikor's benchmark for a brand where techs enter homes but stay briefly is to weigh a third-party crime policy at $250,000 against your actual exposure — sensible once you run multiple crews entering many homes a week, less urgent for a single-installer operation. Keep this entirely separate from any contractor's-license bond your state requires; that bond satisfies a licensing rule and has nothing to do with theft coverage.

The Budget Blinds FDD answers this directly: a contractor's license and bond are required only in states that require a contractor's license to perform the work. This is a license bond — a surety bond a state or municipality requires you to post to hold a contractor or trade license. It is not insurance, and it does not protect you. It guarantees to the state that you will operate within the licensing rules; if you violate them, the bond pays the harmed party and the surety then bills you back.

Two points keep this clear. First, a license bond is unrelated to the theft, property-damage, or product-failure coverage discussed above — those come from your general liability and, optionally, a crime policy, not from a bond. Do not let "bonded" on a certificate stand in for real liability coverage. Second, the requirement is genuinely state-specific. In states that license window-covering or general contractor work, you will need the license and the bond; in states that do not, you will not. The FDD even notes that in some states a franchisee without the experience to qualify for a license has paid a licensed contractor to supervise the work — a cost worth knowing before you open.

The protection here is administrative, not coverage-driven: confirm your state's licensing requirement before opening, post the bond if your state requires it, and treat it as a permit cost rather than a substitute for insurance.

Your premium depends on your state, your revenue, your payroll, your crew size, and your claims history. What you can control is understanding how the number is built — and which part of it can change after the policy year ends.

General liability and workers' compensation are both 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. It can move either direction — overestimate, and you get money back.

General liability for a window-covering installer is usually rated on gross receipts — a rate per $1,000 of revenue — with payments to 1099 installers who cannot show a certificate added to the base. Window-covering install sits at the lighter end of the contractor scale because there is no heavy construction. Workers' compensation, where you have employees, is rated on payroll: payroll divided by 100, multiplied by your state's rate for each class code, multiplied by your experience modification, a factor based on your claims history. The per-$100 rate is set by your state's rating bureau — the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) in most states — not by the carrier. The carrier applies the bureau's rate.

A worked example on the revenue side. Say you estimate $300,000 in revenue when the policy starts — reasonable for an established single-territory Budget Blinds operation. A strong season and a second crew push you to $480,000, a $180,000 difference. If your general liability is rated at roughly $5 per $1,000 of revenue, the audit adds about $900 in premium (180 × $5). That bill usually arrives as one lump sum a few months after the policy year closes — modest here, because window-covering install is a light class, but real.

Budget Blinds' FDD covers the core and even requires an umbrella and EPLI that most install-trade FDDs leave out. The gaps lie in the base-policy exclusions the FDD does not address and a few coverages it leaves silent. The recommendations below are Rikor's baselines, calibrated for a newer franchisee and scaled by revenue, payroll, and crew size. A single-installer operation and a multi-crew operation sit at different points on every line.

Products and completed operations — confirm it is robust, not nominal. Your installed treatments keep operating after you leave, so completed operations is your most important general-liability feature, not a checkbox. Confirm the "your work" exclusion has not been broadened to strip coverage for losses involving your installation, and confirm the policy responds on the occurrence form the FDD requires.

Care, custody, and control endorsement. The FDD does not address the CCC exclusion, which removes coverage for a customer's property your tech was handling — furniture moved to reach a window, a blind set on a finished surface. Add a CCC endorsement so the policy can respond to that damage.

Independent Contractors Liability — confirm no subcontractor exclusion. Budget Blinds operators routinely use 1099 installers in peak season. A subcontractor exclusion on your general liability would remove coverage for liability arising from a sub's work — including a mounting failure that surfaces later. Confirm the exclusion is not present and that your GL extends to your installers.

Employers Liability at $1,000,000. Once you have employees, employers liability is the coverage that responds when an injured installer sues the employer for negligence. The FDD does not state separate EL limits; Rikor's benchmark is $1,000,000 each accident, each employee, and policy limit — confirm your workers' compensation carries it.

Third-party crime at $250,000, exposure-gated. The FDD is silent on crime. Your installers enter homes. General liability excludes employee theft. For a multi-crew operation entering many homes a week, weigh a third-party commercial crime policy at $250,000 with a theft-of-customer-property endorsement, on a Loss Discovered form, which covers a theft found during the policy period even if it began earlier. For a single installer, this is a lower priority than getting completed operations right.

Cyber at $250,000. The FDD does not require cyber, but Budget Blinds franchisees run online booking, in-home scheduling, customer data, and payment processing. Rikor's baseline is $250,000, scaling with revenue, and the policy should include social-engineering and funds-transfer-fraud coverage, the most common small-business cyber loss.

Inland Marine for installation tools and inventory. Your vehicle coverage protects the van, not the drills, lifts, and product inventory inside it. Inland marine — an equipment floater — covers tools and stock in transit and at the job, on an actual cash value basis. Size the limit to what you actually carry; there is no universal number.

Umbrella — the FDD requires $1,000,000, and the reasoning supports it. The FDD requires a $1,000,000 umbrella, and that is the right floor. Reason from your worst realistic loss: most window-covering work is light residential, but a heavy shutter or motorized unit that fails and injures a child, or an installer's vehicle in a serious highway accident, can exceed a $1,000,000 general-liability limit. The required umbrella is the layer that keeps one severe loss from reaching the business. As you take on commercial accounts — property managers, builders, hospitality — that require $2,000,000 or higher certificates, raising the umbrella above the FDD floor becomes the next step.