Ops & Supply

How to vet and onboard vendors as Property Management Founders

Ops & SupplyFor Property Management Founders2 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

When a new vendor calls wanting to work with your property management company, the vetting process is a mess of phone calls, emailed W-9s sitting in your inbox, license verification tabs you opened and forgot, and insurance certificates filed in a folder named 'Misc 2024.' Onboarding an HVAC contractor or a new landscaping crew means cross-referencing your preferred vendor list in a spreadsheet, manually checking their contractor's license on the state licensing board website, chasing a certificate of insurance, and then entering them into AppFolio or Buildium by hand. Miss a step and you're sending an unvetted vendor to a tenant's unit — and carrying the liability.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Ops & SupplyFor Property Management Founders2 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A vendor intake workflow that collects W-9s, insurance certificates, and license numbers, then checks credentials automatically before a vendor ever touches a work order

A vendor roster with status tracking (pending, approved, suspended) that lives in Starch and feeds back into how you assign maintenance tickets

Automated renewal alerts when a vendor's COI or contractor license is within 60 days of expiring, so you're never caught with an uninsured crew on-site

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Project Management Contract Lifecycle Management

Data sources & config

Project Management and Task Manager run natively in Starch with no external connections required for the core tracker. For license verification, Starch automates the relevant state contractor licensing board website through your browser — no API needed. For insurance certificate collection and storage, connect Google Drive from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries it live when checking COI status. Starch connects directly to Gmail so vendor intake emails and COI attachments route into the tracker automatically. Contract Lifecycle Management (coming soon) will add e-signature collection and contract storage to the workflow.

Prompts to copy

Build me a vendor onboarding tracker with fields for vendor name, trade category (plumbing, HVAC, electrical, landscaping, general), license number, license expiration date, COI expiration date, W-9 status, and approval status. Flag any vendor where the COI or license expires within 60 days.

Create a project board for new vendor applications: columns for Submitted, License Verified, Insurance Verified, Approved, and Rejected. When I move a card to Approved, create a task to add them to our AppFolio preferred vendor list.

Set up a weekly alert every Monday that lists any approved vendors with a COI or license expiring in the next 60 days, and create a task for each one assigned to me.

Contract Lifecycle Management — coming soon — set up vendor service agreements with auto-renewal alerts 90 days before the contract end date and route them for my signature before work begins.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Open Starch and describe your vendor intake form: tell it the fields you need (trade, license number, license expiration, COI expiration, W-9 received yes/no, approval status) and it builds the tracker. This replaces the spreadsheet you've been maintaining manually.

2 Set up the project board with columns matching your actual review stages: Submitted → License Verified → Insurance Verified → Approved / Rejected. Starch builds the kanban view from your description.

3 Connect Gmail from Starch's integration catalog. Tell Starch: 'When a vendor sends an email with subject line containing [new vendor application] or an attachment named COI or W-9, create a new vendor card in the tracker and attach the file.' New submissions route in automatically instead of sitting in your inbox.

4 For license verification, tell Starch to automate your state's contractor licensing board website through your browser. Starch navigates to the lookup page, enters the license number from the vendor card, and pulls back the status and expiration date — no API needed, no manual tab-switching.

5 Connect Google Drive from Starch's integration catalog so COI PDFs and W-9s attach to each vendor's record. The agent queries Drive live when you pull up a vendor card, so you always see the current document.

6 Set a vendor approval rule: Starch flags any card where license status is not 'Active' or COI expiration is within 30 days, and moves it to a 'Hold' column automatically with a note explaining why.

7 Build the Monday morning expiration alert: 'Every Monday at 7am, check all approved vendors in the tracker and list any where the COI or license expires within 60 days. Create a follow-up task for each one with the vendor name, what's expiring, and the expiration date.' This runs automatically every week.

8 When you move a vendor to Approved in the project board, a task is created to add them to your AppFolio or Buildium preferred vendor list. Starch can automate that entry through your browser — no API needed for most PMS portals.

9 For vendor service agreements, describe the contract terms you need — scope of work, rate schedule, insurance minimums, indemnification clause — and Starch drafts it. When Contract Lifecycle Management launches, routing for signature and tracking renewal dates will be built into the same workflow.

10 When a vendor is suspended or drops off your approved list (failed inspection, complaint from a tenant), update their status in the tracker. Starch can be told to create a task alerting your maintenance coordinator so they stop assigning work orders to that vendor while you find a replacement.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

Try it on Starch →

Worked example

Approving a new HVAC contractor — March 2026

Sample numbers from a real run

Vendor card created from Gmail intake email	0
State license lookup (FL DBPR) — automated via browser	0
COI received, stored in Google Drive, expiration date pulled	0
W-9 confirmed received	0
Approval task created: add to AppFolio preferred vendor list	0

Sunrise HVAC emails your general inbox with their W-9 and COI attached. Because Gmail is connected to Starch, the intake automation picks up the email and creates a vendor card for Sunrise HVAC in the onboarding tracker — trade: HVAC, status: Submitted. The COI PDF gets attached to the card via Google Drive. Starch then automates the Florida DBPR contractor license lookup through your browser, enters license number CAC1820445, and pulls back status: Active, expiration: November 2026. The COI shows a general liability limit of $1M and expires August 2026 — both above your minimums. Starch moves the card to Approved and creates a task: 'Add Sunrise HVAC to AppFolio preferred vendor list — HVAC category.' Total time you spent: reviewing the card and clicking Approve. The Monday alert will flag Sunrise HVAC in early June 2026, 60 days before their COI expires, so you have time to request the renewal certificate before they're on a job.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Days from vendor application to approved status (target: under 5 business days)

Percentage of approved vendors with current COI on file (target: 100%)

Number of vendors flagged for expired credentials before a work order was assigned

Active approved vendors per trade category (so you're never scrambling when your only plumber is unavailable)

Vendor rejection rate and top rejection reasons (license lapsed, COI below minimums, etc.)

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Spreadsheet + Google Drive folder

Zero cost but entirely manual — you're the automation, which means COI expirations get missed and unvetted vendors slip through when things get busy.

AppFolio or Buildium vendor management (built-in)

Handles vendor assignment to work orders but has no credential verification, no COI expiration tracking, and no automated intake from email.

Vendor management SaaS (e.g., VendorShield, Avetta)

Purpose-built for compliance tracking but priced for larger portfolios, adds another monthly subscription, and doesn't connect to your other workflows or data.

Airtable + Zapier

More flexible than a spreadsheet and can automate some intake steps, but browser-based license verification still requires manual work, and every new automation step means configuring another Zap.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — project management, contract lifecycle management all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

My property management software is AppFolio. Can Starch connect to it directly?

AppFolio doesn't offer a public API for third-party connections. Starch handles this through browser automation — it navigates AppFolio through your browser the same way you would, so it can pull vendor lists, update preferred vendor records, and create work order assignments without needing an official API integration.

Can Starch actually check a contractor's license on the state licensing board website?

Yes. Starch automates any website you can navigate through a browser, including state contractor licensing portals like Florida's DBPR, California's CSLB, or Texas's TDLR. You tell it the license number field to fill in and what to pull back (status, expiration date), and it handles the lookup. No API needed.

What happens to the W-9s and COI documents — where do they actually live?

If you connect Google Drive from Starch's integration catalog, documents can be stored there and the agent queries them live when it needs to check a vendor's current insurance status. Starch itself is not a long-term document archive — it's a live data surface, not a data warehouse. For permanent record-keeping, Google Drive or a folder structure in your PMS remains the source of truth.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? We're asking because we handle tenant and owner data.

Not yet — Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified at this time. If your compliance requirements or owner contracts mandate SOC 2 certified vendors for all systems that touch operational data, that's worth factoring in. The vendor onboarding tracker itself doesn't need to store tenant PII, so many property managers can keep sensitive data in their PMS and use Starch for the workflow layer.

The Contract Lifecycle Management app sounds useful — when is it available?

Contract Lifecycle Management is currently in development. It's listed as coming soon, and you can request beta access to get notified when it launches. In the meantime, you can describe a contract tracking workflow to Starch and it will build a custom app that handles the fields and alerts you need — it won't include e-signature collection until the CLM app ships, but the tracking and alert layer is buildable today.

We have about 80 approved vendors across several trade categories. Will this get slow or messy?

80 vendors is a straightforward dataset for Starch. You can filter and sort by trade, approval status, or expiration date, and the Monday expiration alert will only surface the vendors that need attention — you won't be reviewing the full list each week. If you want separate boards per trade category (HVAC, plumbing, landscaping), just describe that structure and Starch builds it.