Twelve documents, assembled once, and the next Florida tender closes in an afternoon

The estimator liked your number. Then a compliance clerk emails on Tuesday asking for twelve documents, four of which do not exist yet, and the bid is due Thursday. Your broker needs four days to get endorsement pages out of an underwriter. The county tax collector wants you to walk in. The award goes to the sub who already had the folder built.

Put a figure on that Thursday. A $265,000 interiors package carried at nine points is $23,850 of gross profit, and the three days of takeoff behind it score zero on a spreadsheet you are not shown. The package itself is finite: twelve rows, most of them one afternoon each, and once it exists it answers the next tender and the one after that.

The row that sinks a Florida folder is rarely the expensive one. It is a date. A Sunbiz annual report costs $138.75 for an LLC on April 30 and $538.75 on May 2, because the $400 late fee cannot be waived, and an unfiled report administratively dissolves the entity on the fourth Friday of September. That does not stop at the fee. Under s.489.119 the license belongs to you personally and the company trades on a certificate of authority you obtained by qualifying it. Dissolve the entity and there is nothing left for a qualifying agent to qualify. A $138.75 filing missed in April is what takes the $265,000 bid off the table in October.

By the end of this page you will have the twelve rows written down with an issuer and a lead time against each, a license class you can name in one sentence and a stranger can confirm in a search, insurance bought in the form that does not need reissuing per job, and one calendar carrying the five dates that expire the package. Every figure below names the statute or rule it comes from.

Build the folder as twelve rows with dates on them, not as a pile of PDFs

A pile of PDFs is a folder you rebuild every time. Twelve rows with renewal dates against them is an asset, and the difference shows up the third time somebody asks.

Rows 4, 11 and 12 charge you nothing and are the ones most often missing on a Tuesday. Row 1 is long enough that the other eleven get built while it runs rather than after it lands.

Name your license class in one sentence, because the prefix decides the map

A certified license is earned on a state exam and works statewide, carrying a C prefix: CGC, CBC, CRC, CCC, CFC, CMC, CAC, CUC, CVC. A registered license was built on a local competency card and reaches only the jurisdictions that issued it, carrying an R prefix, and since s.163.211 preempted occupational licensing to the state the grandfathered local version expired on July 1, 2025. If your number starts with an R, a county line is a scope limit on a folder meant to travel.

The class after the prefix decides what you may sign.

Two of those rows carry a boundary worth reading off s.489.105(3) rather than off memory. The CBC remodel limb reaches a building of any size only while the work leaves the structural members alone, and the CRC scope runs to three family residences, at two habitable stories over no more than one uninhabitable story, which is a wider job list and a tighter height limit than a plain "two stories" reads as. Section 489.128(1)(a) reads a contract signed outside your scope as unlicensed work, so the row you name on the cover sheet is also the row that decides whether the contract is enforceable by you.

Division II is the trade tier: roofing, sheet metal, mechanical, plumbing, the three air conditioning classes, pool and spa, underground utility and excavation, solar, pollutant storage. Under Rule 61G4-16.001 the exam is three tests for General, Building and Residential and two for most Division II classes, at a uniform 70 percent on each. Electrical sits at a different board entirely, the ECLB, under Chapter 489 Part II with its own fees, renewal and continuing education.

One row is worth checking before you book an exam. Since May 5, 2024 the CILB has certified thirteen specialty categories created by HB 1383, among them screen enclosures, seawall, bulkhead, dock and pile driving work, structural masonry, precast concrete, structural steel, window, door and garage door installation, and structural carpentry. Open book state exams opened for them on August 1, 2024, and there is an exam exemption for a holder of a local competency card held on or after June 30, 2021, with a clean five year record, who passed a substantially similar written exam, on an application the board receives by July 1, 2030. The June 2021 date is a floor rather than a snapshot, so a card first issued in 2022 or 2023 counts too. If you have been running screen enclosures or dock work on a county card, that card may buy the state certificate without an exam sitting. The route through, class by class, is in getting your Florida contractor's license.

Then put the number on the paperwork: s.489.119(5)(b) carries your certification or registration number onto every advertisement, bid, offer and proposal, in every medium. Cheapest line in the package, easiest one to leave off a cover sheet typed at eleven at night.

Get the company's own paper standing behind the person's license

A Florida license is a human being. A subcontract is signed by a company. Row 2 is the bridge, and a compliance clerk checks it first.

Under s.489.119 the business needs a certificate of authority, obtained when a primary qualifying agent qualifies the entity. The primary agent carries supervisory responsibility and joint and several liability; a secondary agent covers specific projects. Section 489.1195 governs what happens when an agent leaves, and an entity with no qualifying agent cannot contract at all, which is unlicensed contracting rather than a paperwork gap. The DBPR extract counts 9,751 active certified qualified businesses, which is roughly the field bidding against you.

Underneath the license sits a financial test worth knowing before it surprises you. Rule 61G4-15.006 splits it in two. Financial responsibility is a current consumer credit report showing no unsatisfied judgments or liens, for you and for any entity you have qualified. Financial stability is a FICO derived score of 660 or better, or completion of a 14 hour Board approved financial responsibility course. Read that second limb as the offense it is: a fixed, finishable course answers a score you cannot move by Thursday. There is no bond alternative in the current rule, so the older advice about posting one is stale.

Order the insurance in the reusable form, above the licensing floor

Row 5 is the row you can buy in a reusable form, and the version sitting in the average folder is the one that gets reissued for every job.

Start with the floor. Rule 61G4-15.003 sets $300,000 public liability and $50,000 property damage for General and Building contractors, and $100,000 and $25,000 for the other CILB categories, and s.489.115(5) makes proof of public liability, property damage and workers compensation a condition of getting and keeping the license. That is a licensing minimum, not a buyer's schedule: general contractors and public owners write higher limits with additional insured wording on top.

The reusable form is a blanket additional insured endorsement, which covers any party you have agreed in a written contract to name, for ongoing and for completed operations. Buy that once, with waiver of subrogation and primary and non-contributory wording on the policy rather than typed into the description box of an ACORD 25, and the next four general contractors are already covered without a fresh request each time. Job specific endorsements are the same document rebuilt on somebody else's deadline. The wording that gets a Florida certificate accepted on the first pass is in Florida contractor insurance certificates.

One scope row changes the certificate entirely. Mold work over 10 square feet needs a DBPR mold remediator or assessor license in its own right, held even by a licensed general contractor, and that credential wants general liability of at least $1,000,000 carrying mold specific coverage. A restoration sub bidding water damage work is assembling a different row 5 from the one their framing competitor uses.

Answer the comp row with a policy number or three certificates

Florida construction triggers mandatory workers compensation coverage at one employee, not four. The four employee threshold belongs to other industries, and quoting it on a prequal form reads exactly as it sounds.

There are two clean answers, and each is a document rather than a sentence. The first is a policy: carrier, number, limits, and your experience modifier, where 1.00 is average and anything below it is a discount your own safety record earned. The second is exemption certificates. A corporate officer or LLC member recorded at 10 percent or more ownership of an entity active on Sunbiz files a DWC-250 electronically for $50, valid two years from its issue date under s.440.05(6), with a ceiling of three exempt officers across the affiliated group. Three officers is three certificates and $150 every two years, and all three belong in the folder rather than one plus an explanation.

The reuse point sits underneath. The same two year clock runs on the subs you hire, because s.440.10(1)(c) requires you to make each one produce evidence of coverage and s.440.10(1)(b) makes you the statutory employer on sublet work when they do not have it. Collect from them what the general contractor collects from you, in the same folder shape, and the file answers both directions at once.

Buy a business tax receipt in every county and city where you actually turn up

Row 7 is the cheapest document in the folder and the one that most often expires unnoticed, because it is not one document. Chapter 205 receipts are issued per county and per city, so a Broward outfit taking a job inside Fort Lauderdale carries two, and picking up work in Miami-Dade adds a third and possibly a fourth.

The calendar is identical wherever you buy them. Receipts are renewable from July 1, they expire on September 30, and on October 1 a delinquent receipt takes a 10 percent penalty plus 5 percent for each further month, capped at 25 percent. So one afternoon in July renews every jurisdiction you hold, and a missed September turns a small fee into a percentage game across all of them at once.

Treat the receipt as part of bidding rather than admin. When you decide to price work in a county you have not worked before, the receipt opens on that decision rather than on the award, and it costs less than a tank of diesel.

Get the surety letter before the job that needs it turns up

Row 9 has the longest lead time and the least urgency attached, which is why it is missing when it matters.

A bonding capacity letter states your single job and aggregate capacity. On private work it reads as a credit reference, and it answers the size question the estimator has not asked out loud. Getting one means a surety underwriting your financials, your work in progress and your history, which takes longer than a bid window does. Start the conversation in a quiet month.

The public side sets the thresholds. Section 255.05 requires a payment and performance bond, executed and recorded in the county of the improvement, on state contracts above $100,000. For counties, cities, school boards and other public bodies the governing body may waive it at or below $200,000, so on a $150,000 city job the answer is a vote rather than a rule. That matters to a subcontractor because public property carries no construction lien in Florida: on a waived job your invoice is unsecured paper. Ask at the pre-bid whether a bond was recorded and get a certified copy. The Florida payment bond claim calculator counts the notice dates off your own furnishing dates while the job is still healthy, which is the moment those dates are cheap.

Keep one calendar so the folder does not expire underneath you

Five dates decide whether the twelve rows are current or historical, and four are the same date statewide.

The continuing education behind that August date is a shopping list rather than a number, so book it in the spring. Rule 61G4-18.001 sets 14 hours per biennium for certified CILB licensees, one hour each of the advanced Florida Building Code module, workplace safety, business practices, workers compensation and laws and rules, then conditional hours by class, among them wind mitigation for General, Building, Residential and Roofing, pool electrical for the pool and spa categories, and cementitious cladding and stucco for General, Building and Residential. A first renewal more than twelve months after licensure takes 7 hours instead of 14. Electrical licensees run 11 hours under Rule 61G6-9.004, of which 7 are technical including the Building Code hour, and alarm and specialty contractors run 7.

This is the part the platform is built to hold. The credentials wallet on your business record stores each license in the licensing registry's own vocabulary rather than as free text, with the number, the status, the issue date and the expiry, and it recomputes 30, 60 and 90 day expiry buckets from the date itself on every read instead of trusting a status somebody forgot to change. That wallet feeds the quote screen: build a quote whose scope nothing you hold covers and the check says so before it goes out, naming what is missing rather than blocking you. A credential past its expiry stops proving coverage the day it lapses.

What it costs

There is no monthly subscription. The platform fee is 2.5% of each invoice processed through AEC Stack, collected on payment due dates.

Everything else here is charged by Florida, and the folder costs less than one lost Thursday:

Open your business record and enter row 1 today: the license class, the number, the issue date and the expiry. The wallet tells you how many days are left before you ask, and says so again on the quote screen each time you price work that credential covers. Then pull the Chapter 205 receipts for the counties you actually worked this year and put July 1 in the calendar, because that is the row that renews the whole set in one afternoon. If your board is thin while the license side runs, the live Florida opportunity list is free to read and needs no account.

<!-- CAPTURE LATER: the credentials wallet on a Florida business record showing a CGC row with number, active status and an expiry of August 31, 2026 sitting in the expiring_90 bucket, next to the quote screen's scope coverage advisory naming the class it could not confirm. Blocked in this wave: the demo tenant is Ontario. -->