Free COI tracking spreadsheet
The exact spreadsheet we'd use if we were tracking COIs by hand. 20 columns, conditional formatting for expirations, an auto-calculated PASS / NEEDS REVIEW / FAIL status column, and a pivot tab for "what's expiring this month." Free. We'll email you the Google Sheet and Excel versions.
What's in it
Built around how an AP clerk or risk coordinator actually uses a COI tracker — not how a software vendor wishes you would.
Vendor nameVendor entity (legal)Contract referenceCarrierCarrier AM BestPolicy number(s)GL — per occurrenceGL — aggregateAuto liabilityWorkers' compUmbrella / ExcessAdditional insured (CG 20 10 + CG 20 37)?Waiver of subrogation (GL + WC)?Primary & non-contributory?Effective dateExpiration dateDays until expiration (formula)Status (auto: PASS / NEEDS REVIEW / FAIL)Last reviewed byNotes
Plus three additional sheets in the workbook:
- Contract requirement template— a starter set of minimum limits and required endorsements. Edit to match your firm's contract. The Status column on the main sheet references it.
- Expiring soon — a pivot view that surfaces any COI expiring in the next 60 days, sorted by date.
- Audit log — append-only tab for noting who reviewed each cert and when. Defensible if a regulator ever asks.
What it doesn't do
This is honest because it matters:
- It doesn't extract data from PDFs.You still have to read each Acord 25 and type the limits, additional insured language, etc. into the row by hand. That's 10–15 minutes per cert.
- It doesn't send you alerts.Conditional formatting will turn the "Days until expiration" column red when something's within 30 days, but you have to be looking at the sheet to see it. No email, no Slack ping.
- It doesn't catch fraudulent COIs.If someone hands you a forged Acord 25, the spreadsheet will cheerfully store the bad data alongside the good data. There's no carrier verification.
- It doesn't scale past ~50 active COIs.At 100+ vendors, the time you spend keeping the spreadsheet current is more than the time you'd spend on real software.
When the spreadsheet makes sense
If you have fewer than 25 active vendor COIs, the spreadsheet is the right tool. The volume is low enough that a once-a-month review cycle works, the manual data entry is tolerable, and software overhead isn't worth it yet.
Use the template, set a recurring calendar reminder for the first business day of each month to review the "Expiring soon" tab, and you're ahead of 70% of your peer companies.
When it stops making sense
If two or more of these are true, the spreadsheet is failing you:
- You have more than 50 active vendor COIs.
- You've had at least one missed expiration in the past 24 months — even a near-miss.
- You spend more than two hours a week typing COI data into the sheet.
- More than one person needs to update the sheet, and you've had data conflicts or version-control problems.
- Your contract requirements changed and you have to manually re-evaluate every existing COI against the new template.
That's the moment COIverify makes sense. Drop a PDF, get a verdict in 30 seconds, automatic expiration alerts, and an audit log that doesn't require anyone's discipline to stay current.
How we built the template
The columns came from talking with risk coordinators at six firms (three GCs, two property managers, one industrial vendor-management team). The status formula is opinionated: it returns FAIL if any required line of coverage is missing or under the contract minimum, NEEDS REVIEW if any free-text field (additional insured wording, waiver) is empty, and PASS only if every checked column satisfies the requirement template.
That's the same verdict logic our software uses, just done in formulas instead of code. The trade-off: in the spreadsheet, you have to type the data in. In the software, we extract it from the PDF for you.