If you are an independent I.T. field contractor with your own customers, contract clients, or you work on platforms like Field Nation, CloudWork Pro, or Work Market and you live in California, you may be required to have a C-7 license.
The threshold for needing the license is: If you’re working on a job where materials and labor costs over $500. If your job is less than $500 in total, you qualify for the minor work exemption – meaning you don’t need a C-7 license.
However, in any case – if you’re doing any low-voltage electrical work over $500, you absolutely need to have a C-7 license.
Clients, Customers, and Platforms Don’t Validate Your Licensing – You Are Responsible
Since you are an independent contractor, most clients and platforms will not require proof of C-7 licensing. You are you own company/entity and are responsible to be in compliance with all state and federal laws. I find that clients and platforms will offer all types of jobs to me that require licensing from alarm, CCTV, electrical, low voltage, etc. Every state has different laws so clients don’t have the time or resources to validate whether you have every license you should have.
Some technicians will accept the work and do the service calls without being licensed. They think since the client offered them the work then they are safe to do the licensed/regulated activity. This is false. You can be fined and punished by the licensing agencies for doing any work that requires licensing.
While you might be able to “get away with it” I choose to operate with integrity and decline any work for which I’m not licensed. I don’t want to risk getting fined and beyond that, I just made the choice to follow the rules.
If you are in CA you can work with direct clients without a C-7 license as I have interpreted the rules as long as each single ticket does not exceed $500 in labor and materials. I would be very mindful of those limits if you don’t want to go through the process of getting the license. If a client offers you a ticket that would exceed that limit, I would decline the work. If it was a platform you might could have the client break the job up into different phases/tickets to ensure that it stays below $500. Again, I’m not an attorney this is just my experience in the industry and what I interpret from articles I’ve read about the C-7 requirement.
Articles for further reading:
C-7 Low Voltage Systems Contractor’s License Guide