Find Commercial Vendors You Can Actually Verify

Stop sourcing vendors by asking the last facility manager you trust. Search verified commercial providers by trade, service area and certification, then decide based on work they’ve actually delivered.

65%

of non-union California janitorial contractors profiled by a labor watchdog from 2018 to 2021 weren’t registered with the state’s employment department.

Source: UCLA Labor Center and Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund, Profile of Janitorial Workers in California (2022)

Sourcing a new vendor usually starts with a phone call to someone who used one once. A peer recommends a janitorial company, you get a number, and nobody checks whether the company is licensed in your state, insured to the limits your lease requires, or staffed to cover a 40,000 square foot site. The referral works or it doesn’t, and you find out after the first invoice.

The alternative is worse. You search online, call five numbers, two go to voicemail, one covers the wrong county, and the two that answer send quotes written against scopes they wrote themselves. Comparing them takes an afternoon of reading. Meanwhile the roof still leaks and your regional director wants a name by Friday. Most teams give up and re-hire whoever they used last time — which is how a bad vendor becomes a three-year relationship.

ClearFM gives you verified provider profiles you can filter by trade, service area, certification and past performance on the platform, so a shortlist takes minutes instead of a week of phone calls.

A shortlist of providers who work your trade, cover your address, hold the certifications you need, and have a record you can read before you call.

What you get

Verified before you look

Every provider profile on ClearFM is verified, so the trades listed, the service areas claimed and the certifications on file have been checked. You’re filtering real capability, not marketing copy from a website built in 2014.

Filter by service area

Search by the property, not the metro. Providers list the areas they actually cover, so a vendor two hours outside your service radius never lands on your shortlist and never wastes a call.

Past performance, not promises

On Starter and above, provider profiles carry performance history from work delivered through the platform. You can see how a company has actually performed before you hand it a contract worth six figures.

How it works

Add your properties

Import your sites by CSV or enter them manually with full geographic data. Service area matching runs off the property address, so getting this right up front does the filtering for you.

Search by trade

Pick the trade you need, from janitorial to landscaping to snow removal, and narrow by certification. ClearFM returns verified providers whose profiles match what the job actually requires.

Compare the shortlist

Read profiles side by side, comparing capabilities, certifications, service areas and performance history. Cut the list to three or four providers you’d be comfortable putting in front of an owner.

Invite or award

Send your shortlist a request for proposal, or assign a work order directly if the job is small. Providers you keep using can move onto an approved vendor list on Growth and above.

Why teams run this on ClearFM

You stop hiring on hearsay

A referral tells you one manager liked one crew at one site. A verified profile tells you the trades a company covers, where it works, what it’s certified for, and how it has performed on the platform. That’s a decision you can defend in a review, and one you can hand to a colleague who wasn’t in the room.

Sourcing takes an hour, not a month

Filtering verified providers by trade and service area collapses the part of the process that used to eat weeks. You skip the voicemail tag and the calls to companies that turn out to work three states away. You reach a real shortlist in one sitting and spend the rest of your time on scope.

Coverage gaps show up before they hurt

Tulsa, Boise, and the single site in the county nobody has visited are where vendor sourcing usually falls apart. Searching by the property address surfaces providers who cover those addresses, which means a secondary market gets the same treatment as your flagship. Your portfolio stops having two service tiers by accident.

Certifications are checked, not claimed

A provider profile lists certifications that ClearFM has verified. If a job needs a licensed electrical contractor or a specific safety credential, you can filter for it and trust what comes back. The awkward conversation where a vendor admits mid-project that the certification lapsed doesn’t happen.

New vendors compete for your work

When the only names you have are incumbents, pricing drifts up and service drifts down. Searching a verified pool puts real alternatives on the table, and incumbents behave differently once they know alternatives exist. You don’t have to threaten anyone, you just have to have options.

Every requester can source without a seat fee

Requester seats are unlimited on every plan, including Free. Site managers, engineers and admins can raise what they need without someone buying another license first. Sourcing stops being bottlenecked through the one person who has access, and the people closest to the building get to say what the building needs.

Built for Real Estate & Facility Teams

Looking for your role or your sector? Start here:

Questions people ask

How does ClearFM verify a provider?

Providers build a profile with their trades, certifications and service areas, and ClearFM checks it before the profile is searchable. That’s what separates a verified profile from a listing you’d find in a directory. Compliance documents including certificates of insurance are tracked separately on Starter and above, with expiry dates, so verification doesn’t go stale after onboarding.

Can I use Vendor Discovery on the free plan?

Yes. Vendor Discovery is available on every plan, including Free, which covers two properties and one manager seat. Free also gives you one open request for proposal and 90 days of history. Provider performance history and compliance tracking start on Starter, so if past performance is what you’re filtering on, that’s the plan to be on.

What if no verified provider covers my property?

Post a request for proposal anyway. ClearFM distributes it to providers in the property’s service area, which reaches companies you wouldn’t have found by searching alone. Rural sites and secondary markets are exactly where this matters, and the distribution step does the outreach work you’d otherwise be doing by phone.

Does it cost anything to find and hire a vendor?

No. There are no per-request charges and no setup fees. ClearFM takes a flat 3% on payments run through the platform, the same rate on every plan, and payments processed count toward your plan fee. So sourcing a vendor and awarding the work costs you nothing beyond the plan you’re already on.