Signing up to Doyo takes about five minutes. Being approved to take work takes a little longer, because a person at Doyo reads every document you send. This guide is the whole of it: what we ask for, why, what each document has to show, and what happens after you send it.
Read it once before you start and you will almost certainly be approved on the first pass. Most pros who wait are waiting on one of two things — a police record check nobody has ordered yet, or an insurance certificate that is missing one line.
Before you start, have these ready
- Your government photo ID — a driver's licence, passport or Ontario photo card.
- A phone that can take a clear photo of it, and of you holding it.
- A police record check, if you already have one from the last twelve months.
- Your trade licence and its number, if your trade is licensed in Ontario.
- Your commercial general liability certificate, if your trade needs cover.
- The hourly rate you want to work at, and the area you want to work in.
If you are missing the last three, sign up anyway. Create the profile first — it tells you exactly which of them apply to the trades you picked, and you can add each one as it arrives.
Step 1 — Create your profile
In Doyo Pro, or at doyo.ca/pros/join, you tell us who you are, which trades you take, what you charge by the hour on the trades you charge hourly for, and where you are based. Your location is used to decide which jobs are near you; customers never see your exact address.
Pick your trades honestly. Every trade you add may come with a licence or an insurance requirement attached, and adding one you cannot document only means jobs you are never offered. You can add trades later at any time.
If your trade is not in the list, add it to the waitlist on the same screen. We read those — several services on Doyo exist because pros asked for them.
Step 2 — Identity
Two photos: your government ID, and a selfie of you holding it so we can see the face and the document together. That is the whole of it.
What gets a photo rejected, almost always: glare across the laminate, a corner cut off, a finger over the expiry date, or a selfie where the ID is too small to read. Take it on a flat surface in daylight, fill the frame, and check you can read every line yourself before sending.
Identity and the police record check together earn your verified badge. Without the badge you are not offered any job, in any trade — so do these two first.
Step 3 — Police record check
We ask for a criminal record check from your local police service or an accredited provider. Most Ontario police services run it online and return it within a few days; some trades and some police services will ask what it is for, and the answer is working in customers' homes.
An approved check counts for one year. We will ask for a current one after that, and tell you before it lapses.
We may decline someone on the basis of what a check shows, particularly for work that means entering a home alone. If there is something on yours you want to explain, send it anyway and write to [email protected] — context is read by a person.
Step 4 — Your licence, if your trade is licensed
Ontario licenses some of the trades on Doyo, and for those we hold your licence on file before you are matched to a single job in that trade. A licence unlocks its own trade and nothing else: an approved electrical licence does not make you matchable for plumbing.
- Electrical — an ECRA/ESA Licensed Electrical Contractor licence.
- Plumbing — a Certificate of Qualification: Plumber (306A).
- Heating & Cooling — a TSSA Gas Technician certificate, G2 or higher.
- Pest Control — an Ontario Structural Exterminator licence.
Send a photo of the licence itself and type in the number exactly as it is printed. If it carries an expiry date, enter that too — we stop offering you that trade's jobs the day it lapses, and we will remind you before then.
You must not accept work you are not licensed to do, and you must not have someone unlicensed do it for you. It is the fastest way to be removed from Doyo, and it is the one thing no insurer will cover.
Step 5 — Liability insurance
Nine trades on Doyo require commercial general liability insurance: Plumbing, Electrical, Heating & Cooling, Painting, Renovation, Flooring & Tiling, Landscaping & Decks, Moving and Pest Control. You need one policy, not one per trade — you insure a business, not a service line.
What the certificate has to show:
- Commercial general liability of at least $2,000,000 per occurrence.
- Your legal or operating name, matching the name on your Doyo profile.
- The policy number and the date the policy runs to.
- On Plumbing, Electrical, Heating & Cooling, Renovation and Flooring & Tiling: Doyo Innovative Solutions Inc. named as an additional insured. Your broker adds this, usually as a no-cost endorsement, and it typically takes a day.
- On Moving: cover for goods in transit, which a standard CGL policy does not always include.
Ask your broker for a certificate of insurance — a COI — with the additional insured endorsement shown on it. A quote, a renewal notice or a payment receipt is not a certificate, and those are the three things we most often have to send back.
The insurance is yours, not ours. There is no Doyo policy standing behind you, and the fact that we have checked your certificate is not a promise by us that your insurer will pay any particular claim. We check it because we tell customers their pro is covered, and that sentence has to be true.
What happens after you send everything
We review within two business days and tell you either way. If something is not approved, the app says what to fix in plain words — not a code, not a silent rejection — and you can send a replacement straight away.
While a document is in review you will see it marked In review. When a renewal is in review and your current one is still valid, you keep working: an in-date approval always wins over a pending replacement.
You can watch all of this on the Verification screen in Doyo Pro. It is the single honest answer to “why am I not getting jobs?”, and it is worth checking before writing to us.
Going online, and your first job
Once your badge is live, go online in the app and jobs near you start arriving. Each offer shows the work, the address area, the time window and what you will earn on it, before you accept anything.
Declining is free and always will be. Accepting and then cancelling is not: it costs the customer their afternoon and it costs your score. Only accept a job you intend to turn up for.
New pros sit at a neutral score rather than a flattering one until there is enough history to mean something. It is not a penalty — it is an honest “we do not know yet”, and it moves quickly once you complete a few jobs.
How you get paid
On a quoted job you set your own price in the quote you send. On a job booked from our catalogue at a listed price, Doyo sets that price — you see it, and what you will earn on it, before you accept. Nobody is ever obliged to take a job at a price they do not want.
Doyo's fee has two parts: a markup added on top of your rate, which the customer pays, and a commission taken out of your rate, which you absorb. Both are shown to you before you accept. Whatever the rates are on the day, the figure stamped on a job when you accept it is the figure that settles — a later fee change cannot re-price a job you already took.
- Coupons and Doyo credit come out of Doyo's share, never out of yours.
- Tips are yours in full. We take no fee on them.
- When a customer's payment was authorized, we capture it on completion and credit your balance.
- When there was no authorized payment, the customer paid you directly. That job shows as paid directly and nothing is added to your Doyo balance, because we never received the money.
On quoted jobs money moves differently. The deposit and the balance are held rather than paid straight out, and released once the customer confirms the work is done. A percentage is held back further for a warranty period and released at the end of it. The percentage and the period are shown to you when you send the quote.
That holdback cuts both ways. It is what lets a customer commit to a large job with someone they have not met — and it is also what stops a customer taking delivery of the work and then vanishing before paying.
The rules that cost pros the most
- The ten per cent rule. Under Ontario's Consumer Protection Act you may not charge a consumer more than ten per cent above your written estimate or quote without their written agreement first. If the job turns out bigger than you thought, stop, put the revised figure in the order chat, and wait for their answer.
- Keep the work on Doyo. Do not take a Doyo customer off the platform and do not accept an invitation to go off it — including cash to avoid the fee, or a follow-up job arranged privately. It is grounds for removal, and it strips you of the record that proves what was agreed if they later dispute it.
- The customer's details are for the job. Do not market to them, do not add them to a list, do not pass them on, and do not keep them beyond what your own records require.
- Turn up in the window you accepted. Lateness and no-shows move your score faster than anything else on this list.
Tax, HST and WSIB
You are an independent contractor on Doyo, not an employee. You choose your jobs, set your rate, decide how the work is done, and can work for anyone else including our competitors. That also means your taxes, your insurance and your business registration are yours.
Once your taxable revenue passes the CRA threshold, registering for HST and charging it is your obligation. If you employ anyone, or your trade requires it, WSIB coverage is yours too.
If you work in construction, read this twice. WSIB coverage is compulsory for most independent operators in construction. Ontario exempts some people doing home renovation work, but that exemption depends on being hired and paid directly by the homeowner — and on Doyo the customer pays Doyo, and Doyo pays you. Do not assume it covers your Doyo work. Check your position with WSIB directly.
Keeping your file current
Licences and policies expire, and when one does you stop being offered that trade's jobs on the day — not as a penalty, but because the sentence we tell customers stops being true. We remind you before the date. Tell us promptly if a licence or a policy lapses, is suspended or is refused.
Renew early. A certificate sent a week before the old one runs out is reviewed while you keep working; one sent the day after means a gap.
Where to get help
Support lives in the app, under your profile, and a person answers. You can also write to [email protected]. If a document was not approved and you do not understand why, that is exactly what to write about — the reason in the app is short, and we can always say more.
The Doyo Pro Academy has short lessons on going online, being chosen for jobs, and getting paid. They are worth twenty minutes before your first job.