Most cleaning businesses should start with general liability, because the two claims cleaners really face, something broken or ruined in a client’s home or office and someone slipping on a floor you just mopped, both land there, subject to the policy’s terms and exclusions. Add workers’ comp the day anyone other than you cleans for pay, if your state requires it, and tools and equipment coverage once the vacuums, floor machines and carpet extractors riding in your car would hurt to replace. Theft by one of your cleaners is the claim owners expect insurance to pay. Usually it won’t. That’s what a janitorial bond is for, and a bond is a separate product that Corgi doesn’t sell.
This is for house cleaners, maid services, office crews, move-out cleaners and window cleaners, and it spends most of its time on what happens when the thing you damage is the thing you were hired to clean.
Key takeaways
- General liability is the first policy most cleaning businesses need, because it typically responds when you damage a client’s property or a client trips over your equipment.
- Damage to the exact surface or item you were working on can fall under an exclusion in general liability, so ask how your policy treats it before you take on stone, hardwood or antiques.
- Theft by a cleaner is usually handled by a janitorial bond or crime coverage, which is separate from general liability.
- Paying helpers in cash or on a 1099 doesn’t decide whether they’re employees, and your state’s rules decide whether you need workers’ comp for them.
- Office and property-management clients usually want a certificate of insurance before your first shift, often naming them as an additional insured.
The surface you’re cleaning, and everything around it
Start with the claim nobody warns you about. General liability is written to pay for damage you cause to other people’s property, but cleaners spend their whole working day with their hands on other people’s property, so the standard form carries a couple of limits that bite cleaners harder than almost any other trade, and they’re far better read before a claim than in a denial letter.
The first is the care, custody or control exclusion. In plain English, property that’s in your care, or that you’re handling, can be treated differently from property you merely happen to be near: a lamp on the far side of the room that your vacuum cord drags off a table is the classic covered claim, but a rug you’ve rolled up and carried to your van to clean at your shop is much closer to property in your care, and many policies won’t pay for that under general liability.
The second limit is narrower. It catches more people.
Standard general liability forms typically exclude damage to the particular part of a property you’re working on when the damage comes from that work, so if you’re polishing a marble countertop and an acidic cleaner etches it, the insurer can argue that the countertop is the very thing you were working on, while the same product splashing onto a wood cabinet beside it is more likely to be treated as damage to other property, which is exactly the kind of claim general liability is built for. Policies don’t all read the same way, though, and how an adjuster applies these terms depends on the facts, which is why the most useful thing you can do is ask your underwriter, before you start, how your policy would treat damage to the item you’re cleaning, and then change how you work on the jobs where the answer sounds like “probably not.”
The fixes are cheap. Keep a short list of surfaces you won’t touch without written instructions, such as natural stone, unsealed wood and antiques, and photograph rooms before move-out jobs, where the landlord and the tenant will both want someone to blame for old scratches.
A slip on a floor you just mopped
Say a crew wet-mops an office lobby at the end of the day and a tenant walking to the elevator falls and breaks a wrist. That’s a bodily injury claim against the cleaning company, and general liability is the policy that typically responds, including the cost of defending you if the tenant’s lawyer says you never put out a sign. Signs, mopping in sections and leaving a dry path cost nothing. They’re also the first things an adjuster will ask about.
Keys, alarm codes and lost access
If you hold client keys, treat them like cash, because insurance often won’t treat a lost key as a loss at all. Losing the master key to an office building can mean rekeying every door, but a lost key usually isn’t physical damage to anyone’s property, so standard general liability wasn’t written with it in mind. Some insurers offer lock-and-key cover by endorsement for janitorial accounts. Ask whether your policy includes anything like it, and if it doesn’t, run your key handling tightly enough that you never need it.
So what’s a cleaning bond, and do you need one?
Fair question, since “bonded” shows up on so many cleaning ads. Our take: if you send cleaners into homes without you, get a janitorial bond, sometimes called a business service bond. It’s a kind of crime coverage that can pay your client if one of your cleaners steals from them, usually once the theft is proven, and general liability typically leaves that loss out because theft isn’t an accident. Still, a bond is no substitute for general liability either. It does nothing about a broken vase or a fall. Corgi doesn’t sell bonds, so if your clients ask for one, get it from a surety or crime insurer and keep your general liability in place beside it; for how the three things differ, see what “licensed, bonded and insured” actually means.
Helpers, crews and workers’ comp
Cleaning crews are where workers’ comp mistakes are easiest to make, because the help is so casual: a friend on Saturdays, a cousin who covers a route, a team paid by the house. The paperwork you use doesn’t decide whether those people are employees. The IRS sorts the evidence into behavioral control, financial control and the type of relationship, and for a cleaner the first two do nearly all the work. Who picks the houses? Who writes the checklist, sets the price and buys the products? If the answer is you, every time, that cleaner looks a lot like your employee under that test, whatever you call them and however you pay them.
Your state decides who needs workers’ comp and when, and its test may differ from the IRS’s, so find your state’s agency on the Department of Labor’s list of state workers’ compensation officials before your first helper starts. Getting it wrong can mean an injured helper with no coverage at all. It can also mean a bill with no claim behind it, since at a premium audit many insurers count what you paid an uninsured helper as if it were your own payroll, so the Saturday friend you paid in cash can show up on an invoice months after the work. The longer version is in do independent contractors need workers’ comp?.
The injuries themselves are mostly unglamorous: back strains from moving furniture, falls from step stools and chemical exposure. An OSHA and NIOSH infosheet on cleaning chemicals warns that mixing products containing bleach and ammonia can cause severe lung damage or death, and it says employers must train workers under OSHA’s hazard communication standard when their cleaning chemicals are hazardous. One cleaner mixing two bottles in a small, closed bathroom can become your most expensive claim.
What office and property clients ask for
Insurance paperwork sounds like a big-firm problem. It arrives with your first commercial account, however small you are: property managers, offices and medical suites typically attach an insurance exhibit to the cleaning contract asking for general liability at a set limit, workers’ comp if you have employees and the client named as an additional insured, and some ask for a bond as well.
Read that exhibit before you sign, because the cheapest time to match a limit is before the contract starts, and read the additional insured wording closely, since a property manager who asked to be an additional insured usually won’t accept a certificate that only lists them as the certificate holder. The property manager will want it before your first shift. With Corgi it’s ready the day you buy, to download or send from your account, and a limit that falls short of the contract can be raised the same day.
See what general liability costs for your business
About five minutes, all online. Your certificate is ready the day you buy.
Two kinds of work deserve their own line on your application. Move-out and post-construction cleaning put you on sites with debris, ladders and other trades, and insurers often treat that differently from a weekly house clean. Window cleaning raises the question of height. Expect your insurer to ask how high you work, since work above a few stories, on ladders, lifts or ropes, is often rated differently or excluded, so describe it accurately.
Frequently asked questions
Does general liability cover damage a cleaner causes in a client’s home?
It typically covers accidental damage to a client’s property, subject to the policy’s terms. But damage to the specific item or surface you were working on, or to property in your care, can be excluded or limited under standard forms, so ask your insurer how your policy treats those situations before you take jobs involving stone, wood or valuables.
Is a cleaning business bond the same as insurance?
No. A janitorial bond can pay a client if one of your cleaners steals from them, usually once the theft is proven, while general liability covers accidental injuries and property damage. They do different jobs, and many cleaning businesses that are asked for a bond still need general liability.
Are my vacuums and floor machines covered when they’re in my car?
Usually not under a commercial property policy, which stops at your business address, so a carpet extractor in the back of your hatchback between jobs sits outside it. Tools and equipment coverage is built for gear that rides with you, subject to conditions such as a locked vehicle and signs of forced entry.
