The Subcontractors hero and Take Action row

The one-glance read, then the work

The top of the Subcontractors page is two rows doing two jobs. The hero is the one-glance read on the bench: how many subs, whether their coverage is holding, and what they have billed you. The Take Action row underneath is where that read turns into work: the sub worth reviewing or replacing right now, and your open sub decisions. This article walks both, including exactly what they show before any data has arrived.

The hero: your bench and its coverage

The band across the top leads with the eyebrow Subcontractors and one large number: your sub count, every vendor on your books flagged as a subcontractor.

Beside the count sits the COI pill, the fastest health read on the page. It shows exactly one of three states, in priority order:

• "[N] COI expired" in the urgent red tone, whenever at least one sub has an expired certificate. Expired coverage outranks everything else, because a sub working your job without insurance is your liability, not theirs.
• "[N] COI expiring" in the caution tone, when nothing has expired but at least one certificate is approaching its date.
• "All COIs current" in the positive tone, when every certificate on file is current.

Under the headline, the subtext reads "[N] current · [N] with no COI on file.", splitting the bench into the subs whose coverage is verified and current and the ones you have no certificate for at all. A sub with no COI on file is not counted as expired, but it is not counted as covered either; it is an unknown, and the page treats unknowns as work to close.

Two secondary figures sit beside the headline:

• Sub Spend, subtitled "Billed To Date": the total dollars your subs have billed across your jobs, from the subcontractor cost lines tied to those jobs.
• Missing COI, subtitled "No Cert On File": the count of subs with no certificate at all. It shifts to the urgent tone whenever it is above zero, because this is the number you can close today: request the certificate and the sub can return it in one tap.

Before any subs exist, the hero shows a zero with no pill, and the subtext reads "Add Data. Your subs appear here as their invoices and COIs come in." That is the honest day-one state, not an error.

Take Action: the review-or-replace call first

The Take Action row leads with the strongest finding the section can make: a Review or replace tile, shown only when at least one sub's reliability reads at risk. It names the at-risk sub with the most backcharges against them, and the tile carries the full case in three lines:

• The label "Review or replace" with the sub's name as the headline.
• The stake: "[$X] of work at risk", their total billed spend, extended with "· [$Y] in backcharges" when you have logged backcharge dollars against them.
• The cost of leaving it: "Left as is, the next job risks another callback and backcharge."

Tapping the tile opens that sub's detail deck, where a dedicated Replace tab lays out the costed case, a stronger same-trade sub already on your roster if one exists, and local alternatives with a ready outreach draft. When no sub reads at risk, this tile simply is not there; it is a finding, and a finding with nothing behind it is correctly absent.

After it come your open sub decisions, each as a tile leading with what it is and the dollars at stake, with a list tile summarizing how many are open. These are the same decisions that reach your Feed: IQ watches the bench continuously and raises a decision when a sub becomes a drop candidate, so a weak sub finds you rather than waiting to be discovered here. Tapping the row title opens the full decision list for the section.

The three honest empty states

When there are no decisions to show, the row says exactly why, in one of three states:

• No subs yet. The card reads "Get your subs on the radar" with the line "Your subcontractors appear here as their invoices and certificates of insurance come in," followed by three one-tap moves: "Forward a subcontractor invoice tied to a job" ("The sub links to the job and their spend starts tracking against your margin."), "Request a certificate of insurance" ("Add a sub with their email and IQ sends a one-tap COI upload link."), and "Forward a subcontractor agreement" ("Set up auto-forward so agreements and COIs land here automatically."). Its footer notes that "Decisions surface as IQ reads sub compliance, job exposure, and margin drag."
• You have cleared them all. The card reads "All clear on your subs" and counts the signals you have already worked through, adding that "New ones surface here as COIs approach expiry or a sub's costs drift."
• Still reading. The card reads "Still reading your subs" with "As IQ reads COI expiries, job exposure, and sub cost against your margin, the decisions that matter surface here."

None of these is a broken screen. They are the row telling you where you are in the loop: no data yet, caught up, or still warming.

Data sources