I have these great ideas for starting a residential and commercial cleaning service but I mainly want to specialize in residential. I just want to know how I would go about getting bonded and insured for the business. If you have some helpful hints please let me know!
Thank You!

Why do you need to be bonded, has one of your customers required it?

But to get bonded or insured, you go down to an insurance agent and buy the coverage

As to the insurance, you need different kinds of insurance for sure, visit or call several, tell them what you plan to do, how you plan to operate (with employees or without), whether you will have commercial autos. etc, think about limits of liability, your exposures to risk, a good agent will ask questions. Compare costs of each. As to bonding, I do not know of any cleaning company that has to furnish any "surety" bond to any governemental entity as a prerequisite for a license or privilege to operate. On large jobs especially for large companies that might be your customer, it's unusual but sometimes required of the cleaning company to "furnish a bond" but no need to be concerned unless it's in the contract between you and your client. As to "fidelity" bonding or loss of your property or monies by dishonest acts of "your" employees, think about 1) if you have any employees that might cause you a loss such as a bookkeeper handling your money, etc 2) if you want to "advertise" to the public that you are "bonded" - which usually means loss of your customer's property, money by dishonest acts of your employees. Ask questions of agents you talk with about "bonding", see if what they say makes sense to you... some agents are knowledgeable and others are not.

Are you also by any chance interested in how you could advertise your business on the Internet for free? Most of the customers that I get for my businesses find me because of the free ads that I place on the Internet.

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Originally Posted by RichardBondMan

As to the insurance, you need different kinds of insurance for sure, visit or call several, tell them what you plan to do, how you plan to operate (with employees or without), whether or not you will have commercial autos., etc, think about limits of liability, your exposures to risk, a good agent will ask questions. Compare costs of each. As to bonding, I do not know of any cleaning company that has to furnish any "surety" bond to any governemental entity as a prerequisite for a license or priviledge to operate. On large jobs especially for large companies that might be your customer, it's unusual but sometimes required of the cleaning company to "furnish a bond" but no need to be concerned unless it's in the contract between you and your client. As to "fidelity" bonding or loss of your property or monies by dishonest acts of "your" employees, think about 1) if you have any employees that might cause you a loss such as a bookkeeper handling your money, etc 2) if you want to "advertise" to the public that you are "bonded" - which usually means loss of your customer's property, money by dishonest acts of your employees. Ask questions of agents you talk with about "bonding", see if what they say makes sense to you.... some agents are knowledgable and others are not.

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Thanks richardbond man that is really helpful. I know insurance and licensing isn't an issue just go and get the coverage. In regards to the bonding, where I reside, there is a huge population of Hispanics and a lot of the women start their own cleaning company and on the side of the vehicles, it always said licensed and bonded or insured and bonded. That's why I posted my question.

I have seen such signs and once was talking to a plumber who ran a nice big ad in the tel book, "bonded and insured". Yet when I asked hiim what insurance/bonding company he was with, he statad he didn't have either and never had either insurance or a bond!! Those cleaning service ads you referred to on the sides of trucks advertising bonded and insurance could just be fictitious and I am sure some are but some services actually tell the truth and have both insurance and bond.

If your are going to have employee's it is always best to be bonded. Many businesses, require being bonded to be considered for the job. For the minimal fee, I find that it is better to have it than not

Question is old and has had sufficient enough answers. Original poster also hasn't returned to the site in a long time.

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