Sign forty roofs in a storm month and keep every one of them

Storm work is the biggest volume a Florida roofing contractor will ever handle, and the whole month runs on one piece of paper. Not the estimate, not the scope, not the photographs of the ridge. The contract the homeowner signs, and specifically the page they sign it on.

Put a real number on it. You hold a certified roofing license and you work Lee and Charlotte counties. A system comes through in September, and in the four weeks after it you sign 40 residential re-roofs at an average of $31,400. That is $1,256,000 of signed work, produced off one contract file that has been on your desktop since 2019. If that file is missing the notice Fla. Stat. s.489.147(5) requires, every one of those 40 homeowners can void inside 10 days of signing. Ten of them take a cheaper number off the next truck through the neighborhood, and 10 times $31,400 is $314,000 walking back out the door in the first two weeks. Then the administrative side: s.489.147(3) puts each violation of the section at up to a $10,000 fine, and 40 contracts executed without that notice is 40 violations, so 40 times $10,000 is $400,000 of exposure sitting on a paragraph nobody typed.

By the end of this page you will have four things: the two bold 14-point blocks positioned on your signature page exactly where the statute puts them, one line of ad copy that turns a prohibited advertisement into a lawful one, a fixed rule for what you say to a homeowner about their own policy, and every storm lead sitting on one pipeline with its own contract and its own dates instead of in a glovebox. The one fact only you can supply is whether the Governor had a state of emergency running over your county on the date each contract was signed, because that single date decides whether the second of those two blocks belongs on that particular job.

All of it is written against the 2025 Florida Statutes, with the section on each rule so you can check any of it in a minute.

Put the insurance notice on the page the owner signs

Section 489.147(7) is the paragraph that closes a nervous homeowner, and it is the one most roofers have never read in the original. It applies to a contractor "executing a contract to replace or repair a roof of a residential property," and the language goes in the contract or as an attachment to it, "in bold type of not less than 14 points on the page reserved for the signature of the residential property owner." The words are prescribed:

If the proposed work is related to an insurance claim, you, the residential property owner, should contact your insurance company to verify coverage for the proposed roofing work, including any claims, deductibles, and policy terms, before signing this contract. By signing this contract, you acknowledge that you have been advised to contact your insurance provider regarding coverage and reimbursement of the proposed work.

Read who that block is actually written for. A homeowner three days after a storm has had four people in their driveway and has no idea which of them is the real one. The contractor who hands them a document that says in bold type go and call your insurer first is the contractor who does not need to explain why they are trustworthy. That is a close, not a warning label, and it is free.

Two details in the wording are worth holding onto. The trigger is the contract, not the claim: (7) applies to every residential roof repair or replacement contract you execute, whether insurance is paying or the owner is writing a check, and the conditional sits inside the notice text rather than in the trigger. And the placement anchor is the page reserved for the signature, so a version of the block buried on page four of your terms is a version that does not comply.

Then the second required notice, which is shorter and easier to miss. Under s.489.147(5), "A contractor may not execute a contract with a residential property owner to repair or replace a roof without including a notice that the contractor may not engage in the practices set forth in paragraph (2)(b)." Paragraph (2)(b) is the rebates, gifts, gift cards, cash, coupons and deductible waivers paragraph. This one prescribes content rather than typography: it does not carry a point size, and the statute does not dictate its wording. What it carries is the consequence in the next sentence. "If the contractor fails to include such notice, the residential property owner may void the contract within 10 days after executing it." That is the $314,000 sentence from the top of this page.

Know which of the two 10-day rights you are looking at

Here is the correction, because the wrong version of this is nearly universal. Search for the Florida roofing 10-day cancellation rule and you will find article after article describing a single right. There are two, they come from different subsections, and they turn on completely different facts.

The practical difference is which way the mistake runs. Believe the two are one rule and you conclude the notice only matters during a declared emergency, which leaves 10 months of ordinary re-roofs voidable for a reason that has nothing to do with storms. Get it the right way round and the (5) notice is permanent template furniture, while the (6)(b) block goes on during a declaration and comes off after it.

The (6)(b) language is prescribed too, and it is longer than the insurance block, because it has to explain the official start date to the homeowner in the same breath. It is also the one that carries a real operational instruction for you: under s.489.147(6)(c) the owner cancels by certified mail, return receipt requested, or another form of mailing that provides proof, "at the address specified in the contract." The address on your contract is the address a cancellation lands at. If that is an old office, a closed PO box or a job trailer that moved in October, you are relying on mail forwarding to tell you which of your signed jobs is still a job.

Say the deductible line the way the statute writes it

Every roofer in Florida has heard a competitor promise to take care of the deductible. Two separate rules make that promise expensive, and they are almost always described as one.

The criminal one is not in Chapter 489 at all. Section 817.234(7)(d) provides that a contractor, or a person acting on behalf of a contractor, "may not knowingly or willfully and with intent to injure, defraud, or deceive, pay, waive, or rebate all or part of an insurance deductible applicable to payment to the contractor," and that a person who violates it "commits a third degree felony, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084." Under s.775.082(3)(e) a third degree felony carries a term of imprisonment not exceeding 5 years. Note the mental state in that sentence: knowingly or willfully, and with intent to injure, defraud, or deceive.

The administrative one has no mental state at all, and it is the one that catches ordinary marketing. Section 489.147(2)(b) prohibits a contractor from offering a residential property owner a rebate, gift, gift card, cash, coupon, waiver of any insurance deductible, or anything else of value in exchange for allowing an inspection of the roof or making an insurance claim for roof damage. Offering it is the violation. A door hanger that says no out of pocket cost, a canvasser saying we will work with you on the deductible, a yard sign promising a free TV for a signed inspection: those are $10,000-per-violation items under s.489.147(3), and under s.489.147(4)(a) "the acts of any person on behalf of a contractor, including, but not limited to, the acts of a compensated employee or a nonemployee who is compensated for soliciting, shall be considered the actions of the contractor." Your canvassers are you.

Now the part that is genuinely good news, and the part almost nobody states correctly. Section 489.147 does not ban advertising storm and insurance roof work. It defines a prohibited advertisement as a communication encouraging an owner to contact a contractor about a roof damage insurance claim unless the communication states, in at least 12-point font and at least half as large as the largest font used in it, that the consumer is responsible for payment of any insurance deductible, that it is insurance fraud punishable as a felony of the third degree for a contractor to pay, waive or rebate all or part of an insurance deductible, and that it is insurance fraud punishable as a felony of the third degree to intentionally file a false or fraudulent insurance claim. The definition covers "door hangers, business cards, magnets, flyers, pamphlets, and e-mails."

So the disclosure is not decoration on a risky ad. The disclosure is what makes the ad lawful. Put that block on the door hanger, at 12 points and at least half the size of your headline, and you are the only truck in the neighborhood whose flyer is compliant. Under s.489.147(4)(b), an unlicensed person who does this work faces unlicensed contracting penalties under s.489.13 and up to $10,000 for each violation, which is worth knowing about the crew that showed up in your county from out of state last week.

Leave the policy to the adjuster and put your estimate in writing

Two more prohibited practices decide how a storm conversation is allowed to run, and both of them are habits rather than schemes.

Section 489.147(2)(d) prohibits "interpreting policy provisions or advising an insured regarding coverages or duties under the insured's property insurance policy or adjusting a property insurance claim on behalf of the insured, unless the contractor holds a license as a public adjuster pursuant to part VI of chapter 626." That is the ban that catches the most decent roofers, because the homeowner asks. They hand you the declarations page and ask whether they are covered for the whole roof or just the slope. The lawful answer is that you will price the work and the coverage question goes to their insurer or to a licensed public adjuster, which is the exact thing your s.489.147(7) block already told them in bold type on the page they are signing.

Section 489.147(2)(e) prohibits "providing an insured with an agreement authorizing repairs without providing a good faith estimate of the itemized and detailed cost of services and materials for repairs undertaken pursuant to a property insurance claim," and then adds the sentence that makes it workable: "A contractor does not violate this paragraph if, as a result of the process of the insurer adjusting a claim, the actual cost of repairs differs from the initial estimate." You are not being held to the number. You are being held to having produced an itemized one before the owner signed an authorization. An estimate broken into tear-off, deck repair, underlayment, drip edge, flashing, ridge, disposal and permit is an ordinary quote in any other month, which is why this rule costs a properly run shop nothing at all. Section 489.147(2)(c) closes the loop on the referral economy: compensation or an inducement in exchange for referring services where property insurance proceeds are payable, other than payment for the roofing work you actually performed, is out.

Run the storm month through one pipeline instead of a glovebox

The failure mode in a storm month is not any one of these rules. It is volume. Forty contracts in four weeks, signed on tailgates, half of them scanned and half of them not, three crews, two supplement conversations with adjusters, and a stack of signed pages in a truck. Nobody loses $10,000 fines because they disagree with s.489.147. They lose them because contract 27 came off an old file and nobody looked at page one.

On a Florida deal record, the pipeline stages are yours to name, so a storm season can run canvassed, inspected, contract out, signed, permit applied, insurer approved, installed, invoiced, with every lead sitting in exactly one column and nothing living in a truck. Each deal carries its own documents, and each document carries your certification or registration number on its face, which is what s.489.119(5)(b) requires on every advertisement, bid, offer and proposal you put out. The job clocks panel on the deal counts the statutory dates off that job's own dates and names the section each one comes from, so the ten day window on a contract signed during a declaration is a date on a record rather than a thing you meant to check.

Behind the documents sits a register of statutory forms rather than a folder of house prose. The Florida rows in it are pinned to the 2025 Florida Statutes edition with their citation, their trigger and their formatting contract, and the strict ones render from statutory text rather than a paraphrase, carrying point size, boldface and placement as content instead of as styling. The recovery fund disclosure under s.489.1425 is pinned there that way already, triggered at contract signing and tested against residential work over $2,500 in labor and materials. Everything assembled off that register comes back to you to read and sign, which is why the contract stays yours.

Invoices carry their own currency, so a Florida job invoices in USD and the same pipeline that held the lead holds the receivable. Forty roofs is only a good month if forty of them get billed.

Put the lien dates on the storm job while the tarps are still on

A storm job is still a construction job, and Chapter 713 does not slow down for weather.

If your direct contract with the owner exceeds $5,000, a Notice of Commencement has to be recorded before work commences under s.713.13, with the threshold set by s.713.135. A full re-roof clears $5,000 comfortably, so on most of those 40 jobs the NOC is part of the sequence, and it is the instrument that carries the owner, the lender and any surety, which is the distribution list every later notice needs. Reading one is in the Notice of Commencement guide.

If you signed with the owner, you do not serve a Notice to Owner, and your 90 days to record a Claim of Lien still run from your last furnishing. If you are the crew working under another roofer's contract, or the supply house delivering to that crew, s.713.06(2)(a) makes the Notice to Owner a prerequisite and the working deadline is day 40 rather than day 45. That distinction, and the mailing date that makes the postmark the service date, is in the Notice to Owner guide, and every date that follows it is laid out in Florida lien deadlines. Put your first and last furnishing dates into the Florida lien deadline calculator and a storm month's worth of jobs produces a storm month's worth of clean dates.

The reason this belongs on a roofing page: insurance money is slow and supplements are slower. A job installed in October and still unpaid in February is inside its lien window in the fall and outside it by spring, and the difference is a date somebody wrote down while the tarps were still on.

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 below goes to the state, a county or a city, and none of it is negotiable after the fact:

The tax rows belong on a roofing page more than on most. Roofing is a material heavy trade, the surtax cap applies per item rather than per invoice, and a mis-set tax line on 40 jobs is a margin problem 40 times over. Which way that fork runs on your contract type is in Florida sales tax on contracts, and the markup arithmetic that sits on top of it is in pricing a Florida job.

Fix the signature page before the next system forms

The blocks on this page share one property that makes them worth an hour in June rather than an afternoon in September: they are all decided before anybody climbs a ladder, and none of them can be repaired afterwards. A contract executed on Tuesday without the (5) notice is voidable for 10 days no matter what you do on Wednesday. A door hanger already in 400 mailboxes without the 12-point disclosure is already out.

The flip side is the whole opportunity. Every one of these is fixable at a desk, once, for every job at the same time. Two bold blocks, one disclosure paragraph, one sentence you say when a homeowner asks about their coverage, and one pipeline that holds the lot. That is a morning, and it is the difference between a storm month that ends with $1,256,000 collected and one that ends with a stack of voided contracts and a DBPR file.

Open the newest deal on your Florida pipeline, open the contract document sitting on it, and scroll to one page: the page with the signature line. If the bold 14-point insurance block is not on that page, and the prohibited-practices notice is not anywhere in the document, you have just found the two edits that protect every roof you sign this season, and they are the same two edits on all of them. If the Florida side of the business is not set up yet, that starts at the new market registration.

<!-- Capture later: a Florida deal record in a storm-season pipeline showing the named stages across the board, with the job clocks panel on one deal counting the s.489.147(6)(a) ten day window from the execution date. Needs a Florida tenant; the current demo tenant is Ontario. -->