CertFocus vs. Billy: COI Tracking Software Comparison

CertFocus by Vertikal RMS and Billy are both COI tracking platforms designed to help companies manage subcontractor insurance compliance, but they come from different starting points and serve different priorities.

CertFocus by Vertikal RMS has operated for 25+ years across 25+ industries, combining Hawk-I AI processing with expert human review from licensed insurance professionals. Billy launched in 2020 as a construction-native platform built around Procore workflows, with a focused set of construction-specific features and an AI review layer that processes certificates in seconds.

The platforms overlap on the fundamentals, but they’re very different in industry breadth, integration readiness, prequalification capability, and how far each platform extends beyond the certificate itself. Billy tracks W-9s, licenses, bonds, and warranty letters and integrates deeply with Procore’s payment workflows. CertFocus by Vertikal RMS brings broader industry coverage, verification across a wider range of insurance lines, quarterly carrier verification, and native integration with PreQual by Vertikal RMS for subcontractor financial analysis.

The right choice between them depends on what your compliance program needs. If Procore integration depth and construction-first document workflows are the priority, Billy was built for exactly that. If you need multi-industry coverage, verification across a broader range of insurance lines, integrated prequalification with financial analysis, or a platform with a longer operating history behind it, CertFocus by Vertikal RMS is the stronger fit.

Quick Comparison

Both platforms handle the core COI tracking workflow. Where they separate is in how deeply each one goes beyond the certificate and whether their integrations are live or in progress.

The table below covers the features that matter most in a direct comparison:

Where CertFocus by Vertikal RMS Wins

CertFocus’s advantages over Billy are most clear in the areas that matter when a claim arrives. Coverage breadth, financial analysis depth, and active coverage verification are where the two platforms diverge most significantly. Billy wins on construction-native speed and integration breadth. CertFocus wins on the quality and depth of what happens after the certificate comes in.

Two-Layer Certificate Review

Collecting certificates is the easy part. Both platforms do it, and both do it well. The hard part is knowing whether the certificate in front of you actually delivers what your contract requires, and that comes down to endorsements.

A certificate confirms coverage existed the day it was issued. It doesn’t prove the sub carries the endorsements your contract demands. The additional insured status that protects you when a claim arrives comes from an endorsement attached to the sub’s policy, and naming you in a certificate holder box confers nothing. A certificate can list every coverage line your contract asks for while leaving you with no claim against the sub’s insurer when something goes wrong.

Agents write endorsement language as free-form prose in the Description of Operations box, and every agent writes it differently. One types “additional insured per CG 20 10 04 13.” Another types “GC is additional insured where required by written contract,” attaches no endorsement form at all, and counts on nobody checking.

CertFocus’s Hawk-I AI reads that prose as language instead of hunting for values in fixed positions. Natural language processing lets it work through how an agent actually wrote the endorsement, so wording nobody standardized still parses. Then a licensed insurance professional reviews what Hawk-I found and decides whether this certificate satisfies this contract.

Here’s what those two layers catch that field-matching tools can’t:

• An endorsement the certificate promises and nobody attached: The Description of Operations box says additional insured. Our reviewer asks for the form and finds nothing behind it. You’d never know from the certificate alone.
• Blanket wording that doesn’t reach you: A blanket endorsement extends additional insured status to parties the sub agreed to name in written contract. Our reviewer confirms your contract actually triggers it instead of taking the phrase at face value.
• An edition date that quietly drops completed operations: CG 20 10 on its own covers you while the sub works. It stops the day they finish. Our reviewer catches the missing CG 20 37 while you can still do something about it.
• Requirements your contract demands and the certificate ignores: Primary and noncontributory wording, waivers of subrogation, per-project aggregates. Our reviewer reads your requirements against what arrived and tells you what’s short.

Those two layers are why CertFocus by Vertikal RMS can take up to 48 hours to review a certificate instead of seconds. The review includes an initial AI pass plus a licensed reviewer who has read thousands of endorsements before. Billy offers human review too, but that’s an additional and optional step that they cannot complete in seconds like the AI review.

Integrated Subcontractor Prequalification With Financial Analysis

This is where the two platforms separate most sharply, and it’s the hardest gap for Billy to close. Billy offers a prequalification module that collects documents and routes submissions for review. It’s a form-and-workflow tool built to gather what a subcontractor submits.

CertFocus by Vertikal RMS integrates natively with PreQual by Vertikal RMS, a dedicated prequalification product with a fundamentally different scope. PreQual evaluates what a subcontractor submits instead of just filing it. That evaluation includes:

• Financial statement review by certified analysts: Real analysts read balance sheets, cash flow, and bonding capacity to judge whether a sub can absorb the financial risk of the work, not just whether they submitted a form.
• EMR verification: Confirms the experience modification rate that signals a sub’s safety and claims history.
• Customizable safety scorecards: Scored against your organization’s own risk criteria rather than a generic template.
• Past performance evaluation: Completion history, default history, and references from prior relationships.

That depth is why PreQual holds up for the most demanding buyers. Turner Construction, the largest domestic contractor in the US by revenue, uses PreQual by Vertikal RMS. A contractor operating at that scale runs prequalification against thousands of subcontractors, and the financial review is what separates a sub who looks capable from one who can actually carry the work without defaulting mid-project. That’s the level of evaluation Billy’s form-based module isn’t built to deliver, and it’s only half of what the platform does.

Some general contractors treat that analysis depth as optional, but SDI carriers don’t. Subcontractor Default Insurance (SDI) generally requires a robust prequalification review before a carrier will issue coverage. SDI protects the GC when a subcontractor defaults, so the carrier wants confidence the sub can finish the work before taking on that risk. A prequalification process that produces a real financial scorecard satisfies that requirement. Document collection doesn’t.

A GC sees the difference between the two platforms right away. A form-based module gathers what the subcontractor submits. A financial analysis that produces a vendor-level scorecard meets the standard SDI carriers require.

The synergy between the two products is the part Billy has no answer for. Because the same company builds both, they share one workflow instead of talking through an integration:

• One-click prequalification: When an admin adds a vendor in CertFocus, a single button starts that vendor’s full prequalification in PreQual. No re-entering data into a separate system.
• Live insurance status on the scorecard: A subcontractor’s current COI compliance from CertFocus appears directly on their PreQual scorecard. A reviewer sees insurance and financial standing in one place instead of cross-referencing two platforms.
• Always current, always logged: Any change to insurance status in CertFocus is reflected on the live PreQual submission, and every step is logged with a timestamp for a clean audit trail.
• One source of truth: No duplicate vendor records, no conflicting compliance status between systems, no manual reconciliation.

For a general contractor, this is the combination that matters. Billy can track certificates and collect prequalification forms. What it can’t do is tell you whether a subcontractor who looks compliant on paper can actually back their indemnification obligations financially.

Document collection doesn’t answer that question. Financial analysis does, and pairing it natively with live insurance compliance is what makes the CertFocus and PreQual combination something Billy’s single-platform model isn’t built to match.

Quarterly Carrier Verification

A certificate confirms coverage existed when it was issued, but it says nothing about whether that coverage is still active six months later.

CertFocus by Vertikal RMS conducts quarterly carrier verification to confirm underlying coverage remains active throughout the policy period. Billy’s website makes no mention of this capability. Mid-term cancellations, insolvencies, and policy lapses are exactly the scenarios quarterly verification catches before a claim arrives and coverage gets disputed.

Operating History and Stability

CertFocus by Vertikal RMS has been in operation for over 25 years. Billy just launched in 2020 and is a less established player. Twenty-five-plus years of operation means established workflows, a proven service model, and a client roster that includes STO Building Group.

Billy launched in 2020. At six years old, the platform is still building the institutional knowledge that comes from processing certificates across market cycles, regulatory changes, and the full range of endorsement complexity that enterprise compliance programs run into. For organizations signing multi-year contracts with a compliance partner, that experience gap is worth weighing carefully.

Breadth of Coverage Lines and Contract Types

Billy built its platform around construction. Its compliance workflows focus on the coverage lines and contract types common to that industry, like general liability, auto, workers’ compensation, professional liability, and a handful of others that appear on most construction projects.

CertFocus by Vertikal RMS operates across 25+ industries. The platform handles insurance verification across as many as 60 lines of coverage, from the standard commercial lines through specialized coverages that rarely appear on a construction certificate but are common in healthcare, real estate, manufacturing, and hospitality. It tracks compliance across scores of distinct contract types rather than the narrower set a construction-first platform is built to handle.

That breadth matters most for organizations whose vendor base doesn’t fit neatly into a single industry. A compliance program managing subcontractors, suppliers, service vendors, tenants, and professional firms across multiple sectors runs into coverage requirements and contract structures a construction-native platform wasn’t designed to process. CertFocus handles that variety because it was built for it.

Negotiated insurance terms are the other piece. Construction insurance requirements tend to be rigid and standardized. The same endorsements and limits appear across most projects, and they don’t get negotiated often.

Contracts in other industries work differently. A commercial real estate lease, a healthcare vendor agreement, or a manufacturing supply contract often carries insurance requirements negotiated for that specific deal. Tracking compliance against non-standard terms takes experience with the full range of how insurance requirements actually get written, which is exactly what 25+ years across 25+ industries creates.

Where Billy Wins

Honesty about competitor strengths is what makes a comparison worth reading. Billy has built real advantages in specific areas, and for the right buyer those advantages matter more than anything CertFocus by Vertikal RMS offers.

The question worth asking first is whether you need them. Everything below extends past the core compliance work of collecting certificates, checking them against contract requirements, chasing deficient vendors to compliance, and keeping status visible before a sub reaches the site. Both platforms handle that core work. Plenty of general contractors never need anything past it.

Procore Integration Depth

Billy’s Procore integration is the most developed among COI tracking platforms available today. It includes two-way sync of projects, vendors, and commitments, a side panel that lets reviewers evaluate certificates directly within Procore without switching platforms, and ProcorePay integration that blocks non-compliant vendors from receiving payment until their certificates meet requirements.

Billy reports that 83% of their customers already use Procore. For that audience, having compliance enforcement live inside the tool the project team uses every day is what makes it actually work. Teams ignore a separate system that makes them cross-reference by hand, but they will use a side panel that sits right inside Procore.

CertFocus’s Procore integration is currently in progress. If Procore is central to how your team operates, that difference matters right now.

Broader Document Scope

Billy tracks more than certificates of insurance. Along with COIs, it manages W-9s, business licenses, surety bonds, and warranty letters in the same system. CertFocus by Vertikal RMS focuses specifically on COIs and insurance compliance.

Onboarding a subcontractor usually means collecting a tax form, verifying a business license, confirming a bond, and tracking the certificate of insurance. When all of those live in one platform, the compliance team works from a single record per vendor instead of stitching together a COI tracker, a document repository, and a spreadsheet or two.

Construction-Native ERP Integrations

Billy ships with pre-built integrations across the ERP stack that construction firms use all the time:

• Sage 300
• Sage Intacct
• CMiC
• Viewpoint Vista
• JD Edwards
• Autodesk
• DocuSign
• Acumatica

For a GC already running one of those systems, the integration is ready to use without custom development work.

CertFocus by Vertikal RMS offers an open API, which provides flexibility but requires more technical work to connect existing systems. Pre-built integrations reduce implementation time, lower the barrier to adoption, and mean the compliance team isn’t waiting on IT to stand up a custom connection before the platform becomes useful.

Trade-Specific Insurance Requirements

Billy tracks subcontractors against the full set of standard construction trade types and lets GCs apply different insurance requirements to each one. A demolition contractor, a roofer, and a structural steel erector carry very different risk profiles, and Billy supports setting different coverage thresholds for each rather than applying one blanket requirement across every vendor.

Billy lets a GC filter COI status by trade, spot where a vendor’s coverage doesn’t match the risk of the work they’re doing, and branch prequalification requirements by trade type. A high-risk trade gets held to higher limits and specific endorsements automatically, while lower-risk vendors clear against a lighter standard.

This is construction-native functionality built around how GCs actually think about subcontractor risk. CertFocus by Vertikal RMS handles trade-based requirements through its configurable requirement sets, but Billy’s trade model is purpose-built for construction and ships with the standard trade list ready to use.

USI Insurance Partnership

Billy holds preferred vendor status in USI Insurance’s PATH risk management program. USI is one of the largest privately held insurance brokers in the United States, with clients spanning construction, real estate, and most major commercial industries.

USI doesn’t extend that designation without vetting. Preferred vendor status in a broker program of this scale involves evaluation against real criteria, and the broker community carries meaningful credibility when recommending compliance platforms to clients. Buyers who already work with USI as their broker, or who weigh broker endorsements when evaluating platforms, will find that Billy carries a credential CertFocus doesn’t.

CertFocus by Vertikal RMS maintains its own referral relationships across the insurance brokerage industry, though it doesn’t market a single formal program the way Billy does with USI.

Choose CertFocus by Vertikal RMS If…

CertFocus by Vertikal RMS is the stronger fit for organizations where review depth, prequalification substance, and active coverage matter more than construction-specific workflow integration. If your compliance program extends beyond construction or your vendor risk evaluation needs to go deeper than the certificate itself, CertFocus is built for that.

Choose CertFocus by Vertikal RMS if:

• You need thorough certificate review: If your compliance work comes down to reviewing certificates accurately and getting deficient vendors compliant, that’s what CertFocus by Vertikal RMS is built around. Procore side panels, bond tracking, warranty letters, and payment gating are real conveniences, but none of them determine whether a deficient certificate gets caught before it becomes a claim.
• Your vendor base covers multiple industries: CertFocus by Vertikal RMS serves 25+ industries. If you manage vendors across real estate, healthcare, manufacturing, hospitality, or any combination alongside construction, a platform built exclusively for GC workflows leaves your compliance team working around its own limitations.
• Your vendors span a wide range of coverage types: CertFocus verifies compliance across as many as 60 lines of coverage and scores of contract types. When you get certificates with unusual coverage lines, non-standard endorsements, or negotiated insurance terms that a construction-first platform rarely encounters, that range is what handles them accurately.
• You’re making a long-term platform decision: CertFocus by Vertikal RMS has operated for 25+ years and carries no outside investor obligations. For enterprise buyers signing multi-year contracts, a self-funded platform with more than two decades of operating history is a different kind of commitment than a six-year-old venture-backed platform.
• You run a Subcontractor Default Insurance program: SDI carriers generally require a real prequalification review before issuing coverage. PreQual by Vertikal RMS produces the vendor-level financial scorecard that meets that requirement, and pairing it with CertFocus by Vertikal RMS puts insurance compliance and financial prequalification in one integrated view. Billy’s form-based module isn’t built to deliver that depth.

Choose Billy If…

Billy is the stronger fit for construction teams whose vendor management needs extend beyond the certificate itself and who use construction platforms or major ERP that Billy integrates with. If your operations are construction-focused and integration depth is the deciding factor, Billy was built for that workflow.

Choose Billy if:

• You run your operations inside Procore: Billy’s Procore integration is live today, with two-way sync, a side panel for in-platform certificate review, and ProcorePay compliance gating. A project team already working in Procore can check compliance without switching tools.
• Your finance team is already in a construction ERP: Billy ships with pre-built connections to Sage, CMiC, Viewpoint Vista, JD Edwards, Acumatica, Autodesk, and DocuSign. If your finance team already works in one of those, the connection is ready on day one instead of waiting on IT to build against an API.
• You need to track more than COIs: Billy manages business licenses, surety bonds, and warranty letters along with certificates, all on a single platform. A compliance team that wants every vendor document type in one system avoids the overhead of juggling separate tools to track each one.
• You want to trial the platform before contracting: Billy offers a 30-day trial. CertFocus by Vertikal RMS doesn’t. A buyer who wants hands-on time with a platform before signing will appreciate that trial, though it matters less to teams that would rather evaluate through a demo and move straight to a contract.
• Your vendors are construction trades: Billy ships with the standard trade list and lets you hold a demolition contractor to different limits than a roofer, then filter compliance status by trade. That model works on day one for a subcontractor base, though vendors outside the trades need requirements built from scratch.

The Bottom Line on CertFocus vs. Billy

Both platforms solve real compliance problems. Billy is a strong choice for construction teams running Procore-first operations who need document scope beyond COIs. CertFocus by Vertikal RMS is the stronger choice when review depth, multi-industry coverage, and integrated financial prequalification matter more than native ERP connectivity. Both rank among the top COI tracking platforms on the market, and the deciding factor is whether your compliance program prioritizes integration depth or review depth.