Know which trades are
cleared, insured and safe to pay.
TradeClear checks every subcontractor's WSIB clearance overnight and reads the expiry date off their certificate of insurance. When one lapses you hear about it that morning, not at the audit.
Free for 14 days, no card. From $99 a month after that. Set up takes about five minutes.
| Trade contractor | Trade | Status | WSIB clearance | Insurance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grand & Sons Electric Cleared to 20 Nov, insured to 1 Mar | Electrical | Active | 20 Nov · 91d | 1 Mar · 192d |
| Delta Framing & Carpentry Insurance expires in 9 days | Framing | Expiring soon | 20 Nov · 91d | 30 Aug · 9d |
| Northgate Roofing Systems Insurance expired 4 Aug | Roofing | Lapsed | 20 Nov · 91d | 4 Aug · expired |
| Simcoe Excavation Co. Waiting on WSIB number and insurance | Excavation | Pending | no account number | not on file |
The roofer texts a photo of their renewal from the truck. The badge goes green on its own. Nobody at your office had to ask twice.
Why this exists
Hiring an uncleared contractor is your liability, not theirs.
Under section 141 of the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, engaging a contractor without a valid clearance can leave you owing their unpaid premiums, with penalties reaching six figures.
Maximum penalty a corporation can face for a conviction under the Act.
How long a WSIB clearance lasts. Most expire on four fixed dates a year: 20 February, 20 May, 20 August and 20 November.
How often somebody in your office re-types every account number into the WSIB portal, one at a time, and files the results where nobody can find them.
What changes
The same job, minus the four afternoons.
How it goes now
- Twenty account numbers, typed into the WSIB portal one at a time, four times a year.
- Certificates saved to a folder nobody can find eighteen months later.
- A policy lapses in March and you hear about it in June, from an auditor.
- "Can we pay Northgate?" is a phone call, and the answer is a shrug.
How it goes with TradeClear
- Every account is checked overnight, and the page WSIB served is kept as proof.
- Certificates are read on arrival and tracked to the day they run out.
- Anything about to lapse gets chased by text before anyone in your office notices.
- The answer is one screen, worst first, with the document behind every row.
How it works
Four steps, and only one of them is yours.
Invite a trade by phone number
Business name, trade, and the mobile number of whoever actually has the paperwork. They get one text.
They tap the link, on site
No password, no account, no app. It asks for their WSIB number and a photo of their certificate, then tells them nothing further is needed.
We check, and keep checking
WSIB is queried directly and the page it served is stored as proof. The certificate is read automatically, then re-checked by rules rather than taken on trust.
You hear only when it matters
Every night at two. Anything lapsing gets chased. Your accounts payable desk gets one email listing what to hold. Quiet nights send nothing.
The audit pack
One button, and the whole binder.
A ZIP with a folder per trade: the timestamped page WSIB served on every check, the certificates they supplied, and a plain summary of what was read off each one. The clearance records are append-only, so nothing in that pack can be edited after the fact. That is the only reason it is worth showing to anyone.
Why the record holds up
A file an auditor can read without taking your word for it.
The page, not a summary of it
Each check stores what WSIB actually returned, and when. A retyped result proves nothing.
Append-only history
Checks are added, never rewritten. What the roster said last November is still in the pack you export today.
Nobody else gets a look
Certificates are served only to a signed-in session on your own account. No advertising, no analytics, no third-party scripts.
Pricing
Priced on how many trades you carry.
Canadian dollars, per month. Ontario customers are charged 13% HST on top. Every plan starts with the same free 14-day trial, and you can cancel from the billing portal whenever you like.
Starter
$99 / month
One site, one superintendent.
Start free- Up to 15 subcontractors
- Nightly WSIB checks, with the page the province served kept as proof
- Certificate reading and expiry tracking
- Nightly exception email to accounts payable
- Audit pack export
Growth
$199 / month
Several sites, and a trade list that turns over.
Start free- Up to 50 subcontractors
- Everything in Starter
- Automated SMS chasing, so nobody at your office asks twice
Enterprise
$399 / month
A trade list nobody can hold in their head.
Start free- Unlimited subcontractors
- Everything in Growth
- Multi-project permissioning
- Custom accounting exports
Every tier gets the nightly check, the stored proof, certificate reading, the payment hold flags and the audit pack. None of that is an upgrade, because a plan that quietly did less of it would tell you that you were covered when you were not.
Questions
The things people ask first.
Does this replace pulling a clearance certificate myself?
It automates the same lookup and keeps the result. The certificate WSIB issues is still WSIB's document, and TradeClear stores the page verbatim rather than reprinting it. If a particular contract needs a formal certificate, get it from WSIB directly.
What happens if the WSIB portal is down?
Nothing changes. An unreachable portal tells you nothing about a contractor, so the previous result stands and the row says when it was last confirmed. Turning somebody else's outage into a red badge would send a crew home over nothing, and that is the one mistake this software cannot afford to make.
Do my subcontractors need an account?
No. They get a link, they use it, and that is the entire relationship. The link works for their business only, and you can reissue it if it goes to the wrong number.
Can it stop a payment?
No, and it is built not to. When a trade lapses, TradeClear raises a recommendation for your accounts payable desk. Holding a progress payment is your decision, under your contract, and no software should be making it for you.
What if the photo of the certificate is unreadable?
The document is stored either way and the row says a person needs to look at it. A certificate that cannot be read automatically is still a certificate you have on file.
What does the trial include?
Fourteen days, no card, up to three subcontractors. That is enough to invite a real trade, watch them upload from their phone, and export an audit pack with the proof inside it. If the trial ends without you choosing a plan, the account goes read-only rather than dark: your roster, your clearance history and your audit pack export all stay.
We already track this in a spreadsheet. Why change?
A spreadsheet holds what somebody typed into it. It cannot tell you that a certificate expired last Tuesday, and at an audit it proves nothing, because the cell could have been edited yesterday. TradeClear does the checking itself, keeps the page WSIB served as the record, and cannot rewrite it after the fact. The spreadsheet is fine right up until somebody asks you to prove it.
Where is my data?
In a Cloudflare database and object store. Documents are private and are only ever served to a signed-in session on your own account. Nothing is sold, and there is no advertising or analytics on the application.
Stop finding out at the audit.
Set it up with one trade this afternoon and see the whole loop work before you decide anything.
No card required.