Certificates current.
Chemicals documented.
Sites kept.
Cleaning has no licence to renew — which sounds like less compliance, and is actually the trap. Nobody sends you a reminder. The obligations arrive through WHS law and whatever your clients demand, and you find out you've missed one when you're standing at the gate.
The one that actually costs money
A lapsed certificate of currency doesn't get you a fine. It gets you stood down. No regulator involved, no warning letter — just a site you can't enter and a client wondering who else they could use. Then it happens again next renewal, at a different client, because nothing is tracking any of them.
Public liability, workers comp, professional indemnity. Different insurers, different renewal dates, every client wanting a current copy on demand.
What a cleaning business is actually carrying
- Certificates of currency, on demand — public liability (often $10–20M), workers comp, sometimes PI. Asked for at contract start, at renewal, and randomly by whoever's auditing this month.
- Safety Data Sheets for every chemical — current, accessible to staff, and correctly labelled the moment anything is decanted into a spray bottle. One of the most commonly failed checks.
- Hazardous chemical register and risk assessments — required under NSW WHS law once you store or use cleaning chemicals.
- Safe work procedures per task — and extra controls the moment work goes up high, into confined spaces, onto construction sites, or near biohazard.
- SWMS for high-risk work — supplied before you start, not after someone asks.
- Staff paperwork — training records, chemical handling, white cards, police checks for occupied premises, site inductions.
- The Cleaning Services Award — casual loading, night and weekend penalties, split shifts, travel between sites. Rates change every 1 July.
- Workers comp and incident reporting — slips, chemical exposure, manual handling. Serious incidents must be reported immediately.
- And the quiet ones — vehicle registrations, equipment servicing, and your lease.
What Komiti does about it
Ask and check
- Business Q&A — cited answers on WHS, hiring, GST, insurance
- Setup checklist — starting a cleaning business properly
- Payday Super check — the super rules changed 1 July
The compliance brain
- Certificate tracking — every policy, every expiry, produced on demand
- SDS register with review dates and correct labelling records
- Safe work procedure and SWMS builder
- Staff register — training, white cards, police checks, expiries
- Document vault — send a client everything in one link
- Change alerts — award rates, WHS codes, chemical rules
Founding operators
We're building this with a small number of cleaning businesses rather than for an imaginary average one. Founding operators shape what gets built first and lock founding pricing for the first year. No card, no commitment — you'll hear from Peter directly.