[marilee]

I just moved to Florida and in order for me to do a cleaning business I need to be licenced and bonded,my question is how do I do that and what does it mean to be licenced and bonded??

[ScottGem]

Licensing is done by a government agency. The agency that liceses you will give you the info and process. Bonding is a form of insurance, that provides guarantees to your client that you will perform the service you are hired for. You can find Bonding agents in the yellow pages.

[eakaos]

i just moved to florida and in order for me to do a cleaning business i need to be licenced and bonded,my question is how do i do that and what does it mean to be licenced and bonded?????????????????

You Have to go get a business license. I would just Google Business license Florida, and to be bonded means you pay for insurance.. . im not sure about Florida but here in Washington for a specialty bond its 6,000. For a general license its 12,000

But the specialty bond covers you for 50,000 worth of damages if you where to have an accident and hurt someone's property.

[RichardBondMan]

Hum, cleaning business in Florida, I write bonds, there are two basic types, surety and fidelity, surety bonds are NOT insurance, they are "extensions of credit" and guarantee that you will comply with a particular ordinance, code of a specific governmental entity or that you will comply with specific terms of a contract that you may have signed with another party. Surety bonds are NOT insurance, they are 3 parties to a surety bond, the obligee, i.e. the city, county, town, state that is requiring the bond, the principal, i.e. the person or entity being bonded, the surety, the insurance company taking the risk. If a principal were to "default" on a surety bond, the surety steps in and honor what the principal failed to honor, then seeks recovery from the principal unlike liability INSURANCE that were simply pay a loss that an INSURED might be held legally liable for. Fidelty "bonds" or fidelity insurance ARE contracts of insurance much like fire insurance or auto insurance - the INSURED expects that if the accidental loss is a covered loss that the insurance company will pay and the insured does not have to pay the insurance company back as with a surety bond. I know of now state, city of town law in FL that "requires" a cleaning service to be bonded with a surety bond, rather the cleaning service might need or simply want to be "bonded" - if the bond is being "required" by contract and the "obligee" wants the cleaning service bonded for performance of the contract, then that's a surety bond not a fidelity bond. Or the company requiring a bond of a cleaning service may simply want to be assured that if an employee of the cleaning service were to dishonestly take property / money, etc. that might belong to them, then that's a gray area in bonding and some surety or insurance companies have "manuscripted" a special kind of fidelity bond just for this purpose - but beware, most surety/insurance companies place a "conviction" rider in these special bonds that state that proof of loss is conviction is a court of law. Finally, a cleaning service definitely wants to consider liability insurance in the event the cleaning company may be held legally liable for damages, injuries caused to others, i.e. their clients or the general public and along this line of thought, if the cleaning company has employees and those employees are entrusted with money, property belonging to the cleaning company, then the cleaning company might want to consider fidelity insurance (or sometimes called a fidelity bond) for dishonest acts of employees that cause the cleaning company a loss.