Free checklist for contractors
Montana contractor compliance checklist
What Montana law asks of a contractor on residential work, from the rules ProntoBill keeps for Montana: licensing, bond and insurance where the state sets them, and the notices and contract requirements. Each item links the law’s own text, and the page says plainly what it doesn’t cover. No account and no email.
Informational guidance, not a legal determination. This page summarizes the rules as they were checked on the dates shown. Each section has conditions a summary can’t hold, so read the law it links. Check with a construction lawyer how the rules apply to your contracts.
Your contractor license
From secondary research, not yet checked against the law’s own text.
Where your license number must appear on documents is not covered here yet.
Bond and liability insurance minimums
The minimums by type of license. They are the floor the law sets: the state may require more of you.
- Construction Contractor License: no bond minimum in the sources read; no insurance minimum in the sources read (MCA 37-45-201, checked November 5, 2026). Checked against the law’s own text, not reviewed by a lawyer.
- Montana’s contractor license law doesn’t set a bond or liability insurance minimum (MCA 37-45-201).
- The license requires proof of compliance with workers’ compensation laws (MCA 37-45-201(1)(b)).
Notices and contract requirements
What the law asks you to give the customer, or put in the contract, on a job. A summary of each, from the rule’s data: the section itself can narrow when it applies.
New-home construction contract terms (28-2-2201)
- Price
- At any price
- When
- Before the contract is signed
- Can cover
- Homes and buildings of 1–4 units
- Recommended
- Residential buildings of 5 or more units: the law doesn’t settle whether it applies, so giving it is the cautious course
- Not covered
- Commercial work
- Not owed when your customer is another contractor.
- Only on a contract to build a new residence (MCA 28-2-2201(1)).
Checked against the law’s own text, not reviewed by a lawyer. Checked November 3, 2026.
Notice of Montana’s construction defect procedure (70-19-427)
- Price
- At any price
- When
- Before the contract is signed. The law names no deadline; this is the cautious course.
- Applies to
- A job that builds or remodels a single-family house, or a condominium or co-op unit.
- Not owed when your customer is another contractor.
Checked against the law’s own text, not reviewed by a lawyer. Checked November 4, 2026.
Federal Cooling-Off Rule notice of cancellation (16 CFR 429)
- Price
- $25 or more
- When
- Before the contract is signed
- Can cover
- Homes and buildings of 1–4 units and residential buildings of 5 or more units
- Not covered
- Commercial work
- Not owed when your customer is another contractor.
- Only when the sale was made at the customer’s home, or anywhere away from your place of business. The $25 is for a sale at the home; elsewhere away from your business, the rule covers sales of $130 or more (16 CFR 429.0(a)).
Checked against the law’s own text, not reviewed by a lawyer. Checked November 4, 2026.
More on each notice: the contractor notices guide
Questions
- Is this legal advice?
- No. It’s informational guidance, not a legal determination: the state’s law as it was read on the dates shown. Check with a construction lawyer how it applies to your contracts.
- Do I need an account?
- No. Nothing here needs an account or an email, and the page sends nothing anywhere. Print it or take a screenshot to keep it.
- What isn’t covered?
- Anything the page doesn’t list: local licenses and permits, lead paint in pre-1978 homes, employees and workers’ compensation beyond the notes above, and sales tax (see the sales-tax guide).
Sales tax by state: the contractor sales-tax guide
