How to track certificates of insurance (COI) in monday.com

By Kayabyte

Short answer: monday.com can hold a certificate of insurance tracker. Create one item per subcontractor or vendor, add a Date column for each policy expiry and a Files column for the certificate, and set up the “when date arrives” automation to notify the person who owns the relationship. That covers the basics. It does not chase vendors for renewals, review what they send, or tell you in one column who is compliant. For those parts you need manual routines or an app such as Expiry & Compliance Tracker.

If you hire subcontractors or work with vendors, you probably need a valid certificate of insurance (COI) on file before they start work, and a new one when the policy renews. Most teams start with a spreadsheet and a calendar reminder. This guide shows how to do the same on a monday.com board, step by step, and where it stops. Menu names and plan limits change over time, so check your own account when a step looks different.

What monday.com gives you

Items and groups: one item per vendor, with groups such as Active, Onboarding and Inactive.
Date column: a policy expiry date. Add one per coverage type.
Files column: stores the certificate PDF on the item.
Status column: a manual label such as Valid, Expiring or Expired.
People column: who owns the relationship and should get the reminder.
Automations: rules such as “when date arrives, notify someone”.
Filters and views: show only items that are expired or about to be.

Step by step: a COI board

Create the board. Start a new board and name it Vendor insurance. Rename the first column to Vendor.
Add the columns. Add a People column (Owner), a Status column (Compliance), and for each coverage you require a Date column and a Files column. For example: General liability expiry, General liability COI, Workers’ comp expiry, Workers’ comp COI.
Set the status labels. Edit the Compliance column labels to Valid, Expiring soon, Expired and Missing. Colors help when you scan the board.
Fill in the vendors. Add each vendor as an item, enter the expiry date from the certificate, and upload the PDF to the Files column. Keep the date and the file together in the same item, so you can check one against the other.
Add the reminder automation. Open Automations on the board, search for the “when date arrives, notify someone” recipe, pick the expiry Date column, and set the timing. The “when” part can be set to a number of days before the date, so one rule can warn the owner 30 days ahead. Choose the People column as who is notified. Repeat for each Date column, and add another rule with a different offset (for example 60 and 7 days) if you want several warnings.
Add an overdue rule. monday.com also offers a daily recipe along the lines of “every day, if date has passed and only if status is something, notify someone”. Use it with the Compliance status so that an expired COI keeps reminding someone until the status changes.
Make a working view. Add a view with a filter on the Compliance status, or sort by expiry date, and open it in your weekly meeting.

Where it stops

Each date needs its own rule. One automation watches one Date column. With several coverage types you end up with many rules to build and maintain.
A date trigger fires once. The “date arrives” rule fires on that date. If the vendor renews and you change the date, check that the rule still behaves as you expect for the new date, and test it with an item you can change.
Status is manual. Nothing sets Valid, Expiring soon or Expired from the date. Either someone updates it, or you add more automations to change it, which adds more rules.
Formula columns don’t trigger automations. You can show “days left” in a Formula column, but monday.com’s automations do not react to formula results. Keep the real expiry in a Date column.
Time of day. Date automations run at the time set in the rule and do not consider the time of day on the date.
Chasing vendors is manual. monday.com can notify you, but you still write to the vendor, wait for a PDF by email, download it and upload it to the right item.
No review step. A file in a Files column is not checked. Nobody confirms that the new certificate names the right insured, has the right limits and runs for the right period.
Guests and sharing. If vendors upload to the board themselves, they need guest access and a seat or permission, and they see more of your board than you may want. Many teams avoid it.
One view of compliance. To answer “who is out of compliance today”, you filter by status and expiry. It works, but only as well as the status labels are kept up.

Habits that keep a COI board honest

Record the date from the certificate itself, not the date you received it.
Keep one Date column per coverage type, with the same names everywhere.
Decide who is required to have what, and mark vendors that need no certificate, so they do not show up as missing.
Review expired and missing items on a fixed day each week.
Keep the old certificate in the item’s update history or a separate Files column, so you can show what was valid at a given time.

Expiry & Compliance Tracker

Expiry & Compliance Tracker is the app we make for the parts above that stop. It works on the board you already have, so the vendors and dates stay where they are.

You define document types, such as General liability COI or Workers’ comp, and map each to a date column and a file column. A type can be required for all items, for some groups, or for items with a given status.
Each item gets a state per document type: Valid, Expiring soon, Expired or Missing. The item’s overall state is the worst of its types, and it can be written back to a status column so your filters, dashboards and automations work.
Reminders go out at offsets you choose, such as 60, 30 and 7 days and on the expiry day, once per date, as monday notifications.
For renewals, you create a secure upload link per vendor and document type. The vendor opens it without a monday account, uploads the new certificate and enters the new expiry date. The date on your board does not change until someone on your team reviews the file and approves it.
The app does not send email itself. It can put the link in a link column, so your own monday email automations can send it.

There is a Free plan for a small number of tracked items. See the Expiry & Compliance Tracker page for current plans.

FAQ

Can monday.com remind me before a certificate of insurance expires? Yes. Use a Date column for the expiry and the “when date arrives, notify someone” automation, with the timing set to a number of days before the date. You need one rule per Date column.

Can monday.com set the status to Expired automatically? With an extra automation on the date, yes, but formula columns cannot trigger changes. The usual way is a rule on the Date column that changes the Status column when the date arrives.

Can vendors upload their own certificates to a monday.com board? They can if you give them guest access to the board, but they then see the board and need permissions. A separate upload link avoids that. The app above provides one.

What should I record for each COI? The insured name, the type of coverage, the policy expiry date, the certificate file, and who owns the vendor relationship. If you require specific limits or an additional insured, add a column for it.

Is this legal or insurance advice? No. It shows how to organize the documents. Your insurer or counsel decides what coverage you require.

monday.com is a trademark of monday.com Ltd. Kayabyte is an independent developer and is not affiliated with or endorsed by monday.com.