Glossary

Trade-to-trade, defined

The SKILLS and construction terms you'll see across the platform — in plain language.

Posting: On SKILLS, a Posting is the listing a contractor business puts on the marketplace to either find help or offer it. There are two kinds: Crew Needed and Crew Available. Each Posting carries the trade, crew size, location or service area, schedule, and pay so other businesses can respond with a structured offer.
Crew Needed: A Crew Needed posting means a contractor has more work than hands and is looking to bring in qualified labor to cover a gap. It spells out the trade, how many people, where, when, and the pay range, so available crews can size up the fit fast and respond with a Coverage Offer.
Crew Available: A Crew Available posting is how a contractor advertises open crew capacity during downtime. Instead of letting skilled hands sit idle between jobs, the business lists its trade, crew size, service area, and dates so other contractors with overflow work can find them and send a Coverage Offer.
Coverage Offer: A Coverage Offer is the structured proposal one contractor sends in response to a Posting. It states the rate, crew, and terms in a fixed format rather than loose back-and-forth. Built-in guardrails like offer floors, rate caps, and submission limits keep offers fair and cut down on lowball spam.
Work Agreement: A Work Agreement is the binding record created when a Coverage Offer is accepted. It captures the agreed trade, crew, dates, and pay as a fixed, server-controlled, audit-logged snapshot that neither side can quietly edit later. That immutable record is what makes the commitment dispute-ready if anything goes sideways on the job.
Locked In: Locked In is the status a deal reaches the moment a Coverage Offer is accepted and a Work Agreement is created. It signals both businesses are committed to the agreed terms. From there the job moves to Crews on Site and then Work Finished, with each step tracked for accountability.
Workboard: The Workboard is a contractor's command center inside SKILLS. It pulls active postings, pending offers, unread messages, and recent notifications into one screen, so an owner-operator can see what needs action without digging. It's built for someone checking a phone between site visits, not sitting at a desk.
Compliance Vault: The Compliance Vault is where a contractor stores and tracks paperwork like Certificates of Insurance, licenses, and certifications in one place. It flags documents that are expiring or expired and feeds a business's verification tier, so the right credentials are ready to share the moment another contractor needs to see them.
Verification Tier: A Verification Tier is a trust level a contractor business earns by adding company details and compliance documents. The tiers run Basic, then Trusted, then Verified Pro, climbing as more credentials are confirmed. Higher tiers signal to other contractors that a business is a real, vetted operation rather than an unknown name on a screen.
Offer Floor: An Offer Floor is the minimum rate a Posting will accept on an incoming Coverage Offer. It's an anti-lowball guardrail: offers below the floor get flagged or blocked before they're sent. The goal is to protect fair market pricing so contractors can use downtime without dragging down the going rate for their trade.
Certificate of Insurance (COI): A Certificate of Insurance, or COI, is a one-page document from an insurer that proves a contractor carries active coverage, usually general liability and workers' comp. It lists policy limits, dates, and the carrier. General contractors routinely require a current COI before letting a sub start work, and it expires, so it has to be kept up to date.
Additional Insured: Additional Insured is a status added to a contractor's insurance policy that extends coverage to another party, often the general contractor or property owner. If a claim arises from the sub's work, the additional insured can be protected under the sub's policy. GCs commonly require it and want their name listed on the Certificate of Insurance.
W-9: A W-9 is an IRS form a business or independent contractor fills out to provide its legal name, address, and taxpayer ID number to whoever is paying them. The payer uses it to issue a 1099 at year-end. General contractors almost always collect a W-9 from a subcontractor before cutting the first check.
Retainage: Retainage is a portion of each payment, often five to ten percent, that a general contractor or owner holds back until the job is substantially complete. It's leverage to make sure the work gets finished and punch-list items get fixed. For subs, retainage ties up cash, so tracking what's owed and when it releases matters.
Prevailing Wage: Prevailing Wage is the minimum hourly pay, plus benefits, that workers must be paid on many publicly funded construction projects. Government agencies set it by trade and region. On covered jobs, contractors must pay it and document it through certified payroll, so labor costs on public work are set, not negotiable.
Subcontractor: A subcontractor is a specialized trade business hired by a general contractor to perform a defined scope of work, such as electrical, plumbing, or framing. The sub answers to the GC rather than the property owner, carries its own insurance and license, and is responsible for its own crew, tools, and quality on that scope.
General Contractor (GC): A General Contractor, or GC, is the business that holds the prime contract with the owner and runs the overall construction project. The GC schedules the work, hires and coordinates subcontractors, manages the budget, and is accountable to the owner for delivering the finished job on time and to spec.
Service Area: A Service Area is the geographic range a contractor is willing to travel to take work, usually set as a radius around a home base. On a Crew Available posting it tells other contractors where the crew can realistically show up, so offers come from jobs that are actually within reach instead of hours away.

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