Xactimate® insurance estimates, Xactimate estimating services for restoration contractors
Mitigation invoices, rebuild estimates and supplements written in Xactimate, on the price list you name, with the list version and its effective date printed on the file. Delivered as an ESX and a PDF in 24-96 hours from an approved fixed quote, after a second estimator has read it.
What lands in your inbox
- The ESX, plus a PDF estimate report with the summary page
- Sketch pages whose room names match the line items exactly
- A photo report tying images to the scope they support
- F9 notes on every judgment call, naming what documents it
- A written assumptions, inclusions and exclusions sheet
Xactimate estimating services for restoration contractors, and the general contractors who rebuild for them
Four kinds of buyer send claim files to this desk, and each needs a different document out the other end. Which one you need is decided by where you sit on the claim, not by how bad the loss was.
Restoration contractors
Equipment runs Monday and you are rebuilding a month later, which is two documents on one claim number. The mitigation invoice comes off the drying log. The rebuild estimate comes off the sketch. Written by the same desk, they reconcile instead of arguing.
Outsourced Xactimate estimate writing for general contractors
You picked up the rebuild after somebody else dried the structure, so the estimate in the file is their scope, their room names, their assumptions. We write yours against what the photos and the demolition show, and state in writing where the two documents disagree.
Xactimate estimates for public adjusters
You need the scope written in the carrier's own tool and its own line items, so the conversation is about coverage rather than format. We build the file and hand it to you. You represent the insured, because that is your license and your job, not ours.
Roofing and exterior contractors
A roof file lives on squares, pitch, facets and layer count. Pitch is what earns a steep charge, eave height is what earns a high charge, and layer count is what you are actually paid to tear off. Send an EagleView report or your field measurements and the roof is written off measured geometry rather than a guess at the slope.
Insurance restoration estimating services, by loss type
Open the loss you are holding. Each group names what the scope is actually assembled from, because a water file and a smoke file are built out of different evidence even when the room is the same.
Water losses
Category and class decide the scope before a line is written.
Category 1, a clean supply line
CAT 1Scope comes off the affected material inventory and the daily readings. Class drives the equipment count, the sketch drives the reinstall, and both halves must agree on which rooms were wet.
Category 2 and 3, grey and gross contamination
CAT 2 AND 3Removal runs wider than the wet line, so antimicrobial application and containment become defensible items. These files are argued on the distance between what was wet and what was removed, which is why the source of the water and how long it sat, the two things that actually set the category, go into the file.
Fire and smoke damage estimate Xactimate
Two different scopes wearing one word.
Structure fire with heat damage
HEATDemolition to sound material, then a rebuild reading like new construction inside an existing shell. Debris is written from measured volume and trip count, because on a full structure fire it is the largest item nobody photographs.
Smoke and odor without heat
SMOKECleaning, HEPA vacuuming, duct cleaning, and a sealer coat plus a stated finish coat count. A room enters the scope because a photo or a reading puts it there. Adding the rest of the floor because it is adjacent is the pattern automated review exists to catch.
Contents pack out estimate Xactimate
The file most contractors leave defensibility in.
Inventory and the non restorable list
INVENTORYRoom by room inventory with condition noted, plus a separate non restorable list carrying the reason each item is on it. The two must be mutually exclusive or the file reads as double counted.
Pack out, storage and packback
HANDLINGHandling, transport, storage by the month and packback are four cost events, and storage months run against rebuild duration. Content manipulation, moving contents inside a room to work behind them, is its own line and is constantly confused with pack out.
Large loss commercial insurance restoration estimate
Where the file stops being a document and becomes a set.
Multi story and multi building losses
LARGE LOSSGrouped by building, level and unit, common areas separated from tenant space, room naming that survives a reader who was never on site. On a large loss, navigability is a scope defense in itself.
Apartment and condominium buildings
MULTI FAMILYA multi family insurance restoration estimate carries repeating unit types, so scope is written once per type and applied by unit, with the units that differ called out. Association and unit owner policies cut the building in different places, so we write by physical area and label it.
Work that is not a claim file
Three jobs that arrive here and belong on another desk.
A rebuild the owner is paying for
NOT A CLAIMNo claim, no carrier, no price list. That work prices from labor, material, equipment and your own markup, which is a different desk and a different document.
See construction estimating servicesA house rebuilt outside a claim
HOUSINGA custom home, an addition or a full gut funded by a lender or an owner rather than a policy. Same building, different pricing basis.
Residential construction estimating servicesA commercial building outside a claim
TENANT WORKTenant improvement, a shell fit out, a negotiated rebuild with no carrier in it. It prices from the market the work gets built in, not from a list published for a loss zip.
Commercial construction estimating servicesWhich Xactimate price list your file is written on, stated in writing
Verisk publishes price lists monthly and they are region and zip specific. Pick the wrong one and the file bounces before anybody reads a word of your scope. So the rule this desk follows is published in advance rather than discovered afterwards.
Which Xactimate price list to use for a date of loss
Date of loss, date of repair, or a list that moved out from under a long job.
Date of loss is the default
DEFAULTUnless you say otherwise, the file is written on the list published for the month the loss happened, in the region the loss zip falls in. The list carries regional pricing and the local sales tax rate, so a neighboring region can be a real percentage away on the same line item.
Date of repair, and when it is the right call
BY AGREEMENTSome carriers and programs settle on the list current when the work is performed. Name it at intake and the file is written that way. We do not choose between the two on your behalf, because that choice touches settlement position, and settlement position is yours.
A loss that is fourteen months old
AGED FILESThe list from the month of loss still exists and can still be written on. Moving an existing ESX onto a current list is a reprice rather than a rewrite, so it is quoted lower because the scope already exists. Send the ESX instead of a PDF and it is cheaper again.
A rebuild that outruns the list it started on
LONG JOBSA nine month rebuild written on a list from month one is priced in money that no longer buys the material. That is a legitimate reason a supplement exists, and the one contractors raise last and lose most often.
You name the list, or we name the one we used
There is no version of this where the price list is a mystery.
The list you name
YOUR CALLIf a carrier, program or TPA mandates a list, tell us and we write on it. We do not substitute a different list because we think it prices better. Send the program rules with the claim and the estimate is written inside them rather than corrected into them later.
Our default when you name nothing
FALLBACKThe list published for the month of loss, in the region the loss zip falls in. The list we intend to use appears in the fixed quote by version and effective date, so if it is wrong for your claim that is a two word reply and it costs nothing, because nothing has been written.
What the delivered file states
ON THE FILEThe version, effective date and region are printed on the estimate and repeated on the assumptions sheet. A mismatch is caught by automated review before a human reads the scope, so the whole file comes back over a header. Naming the list is the cheapest defensive move on an insurance estimate.
Send one claim and read the file before you send a second
One loss, one fixed price agreed in writing first. Judge the price list header, the F9 notes and the summary page, then decide whether another file follows.
Sketch discipline, room by room
A sketch error is never one wrong number. Wall, ceiling and floor quantities derive from the geometry, so a room drawn a foot short quietly moves every surface driven item inside it. This is the order the sketch gets built in.
Start from measured geometry, not from memory
Room names before geometry
Dimensions, then the surfaces they drive
Offsets, stairs, sloped ceilings and roof facets
A Xactimate estimate with sketch and room dimensions that agree
Line item anatomy, code, selector, activity, unit
A Xactimate estimate writing service is judged on four small decisions repeated a few hundred times. Get one of them near right instead of right and the file still totals, still prints, and still reads wrong to the person reviewing it.
The four parts of every line
The code decides the price. Everything after it is arithmetic on that decision.
Category and selector
WTR, DMO, DRYThe three letter category and the selector under it are the pricing decision. WTR, HMR, DMO, DRY, PNT, FCC and CLN each carry their own logic about what the line already includes.
The near miss code is the silent error
Two selectors describing almost the same work carry different inclusions and different unit prices. Pick the neighboring one and nothing looks wrong: right room, right quantity, plausible total. It is the most common defect in outsourced estimate writing and it is invisible without a second reader.
The activity on top of the code
R&R, D&RRemove, replace, R&R and detach and reset are four cost events on one material. A toilet pulled to replace flooring is detached and reset. A toilet destroyed by the loss is removed and replaced. The photo record decides which, and the note says which photo decided it.
The unit of measure
SF, LF, SY, EA, DA, HRThe unit is where sketch geometry meets the price. Carpet quoted in SY against a floor drawn in SF is a ninefold error waiting to be noticed. DA gets audited hardest, because one extra day across eight air movers with no reading behind it is the first pattern a reviewer looks for.
Modifiers, and the market conditions question
MODIFIERSAfter hours, weekend and emergency modifiers go in where the timeline supports them, not as a habit. A line whose note names the callout time and the reason is defensible. The same line with no note reads as padding and drags the rest of the file with it. A market conditions adjustment is a different animal: it is a documented request against a named event, not a modifier you tick.
Where line item files quietly go wrong
Three defects that survive a total check and fail a review.
Overlapping scope on one surface
OVERLAPA remove line and an R&R line on the same wall. A seal line inside a paint selector that already includes it. The second read groups items by room and surface rather than reading down the list, because overlap is invisible in a sorted report and obvious in a room.
Labor minimums stacked in one room
MINIMUMSMinimums exist because a trade cannot mobilize for four square feet. Three minimums for one trade on one visit is not three mobilizations, and a reviewer knows it. Where a minimum is earned the note says what the trade came out for. Where it is not, it comes out.
Orphan lines and buried waste
ORPHANSA line in a room with no documented damage contributes small money and large doubt. Waste added silently into a measured quantity makes the sketch and the estimate disagree, and the sketch is what a reviewer can check. The final pass walks the estimate room by room against the photo report.
The justification layer, written into the line
A file gets approved on the first pass when the reviewer never has to ask why an item is there. The note attached to the line is where that question gets answered before anybody thinks to ask it.
What goes into a Xactimate estimate with F9 line item notes?
Four things: what the item is for, what documents it, the requirement that makes it necessary, and the photo or reading it ties to. Two sentences is usually enough. A note repeating the line item description adds nothing, and a note arguing coverage belongs to a conversation this desk takes no part in.
How do code upgrade line items and ordinance and law get cited?
By citing it. The IRC or IBC section number plus the local amendment if your jurisdiction has one, written beside the line it justifies. The note separates what code requires from what is simply better practice, because ordinance and law is separate, capped coverage that will not fund everything a code demands.
How many photos does a line item actually need?
Enough to walk somebody through a room they were never in: a property overview, a room overview from two opposite corners, the damage itself, and a close up with a scale reference. Judgment items need the close up. Obvious items do not, and padding a photo report dilutes the ones that matter.
Which line items always get a note, and which do not?
Anything a reviewer could challenge: minimums, modifiers, equipment days, code driven items, anything unusual for the loss type, and any quantity not obvious from the sketch. Standard replacement of a documented damaged material needs no note, and giving it one buries the notes doing real work.
Mitigation and rebuild are two different disciplines
They arrive on one claim number and they are built from completely different evidence. One is billed from a drying log. The other is billed from a sketch. Writers who treat them as a single document give the mitigation invoice away.
Ask an estimator before you send anything at all
Which price list, whether your carrier takes an ESX, what a thin photo record can support. Ask first, or open the redacted file set and read a real one instead.
Supplement, reprice or revision, three different jobs
Insurance supplement writing is not one service. What you need depends on whether the scope changed, the price list changed, or we got something wrong, and those three cost different amounts because they are different amounts of work.
| Demolition exposed damage nobody could see | Supplement | Demo photos, moisture map, approved estimate | Fixed quote on the added scope only |
|---|---|---|---|
| The desk adjuster's scope missed a room | Supplement after adjuster scope | Their ESX, your scope sheet, room photos | Quoted off the delta, not the whole file |
| Code requires work the estimate does not carry | Supplement | The code section and any local amendment | Quoted on the added scope, code cited on the line |
| A roof reopened for missing components | Roof supplement Xactimate estimate | Pitch, facets, layer count, tear off photos | Quoted on what was exposed, not the whole roof |
| The job ran long and the price list moved | Reprice | The original ESX and the job dates | Cheaper than writing the file again |
| We put something in the file wrong | Revision | Point at the line | No charge, on unchanged scope |
| You want a room renamed or a format change | Revision | Tell us what to change | Included, on unchanged scope |
Overhead, profit and depreciation, answered honestly
These three lines decide what reaches your account and when. Most of this category either avoids them or promises outcomes nobody controls. Here is what is convention, what is arithmetic, and what is decided somewhere neither of us sits.
Overhead and profit documentation on insurance estimates
A convention, not a statute, and worth understanding as one.
The three trade convention
10 AND 10The informal rule that general contractor overhead and profit, commonly 10% and 10%, is appropriate where a job requires three or more trades coordinated. It grew up in practice. It is not law, it is not in most policies, and no vendor can make it apply.
What documentation actually does here
A file showing the trades involved, the sequencing between them and the coordination the job required makes the position visible and checkable. That strengthens it. It does not decide it, and anybody telling you they can decide it is selling something this desk does not sell.
Why Xactimate keeps it off the line
STRUCTURELine items are built without general contractor overhead and profit inside them, which is why O&P is applied separately rather than hidden in unit costs. Trade markup sits inside what a subcontractor charges you. General conditions are a third thing again, and confusing the three gets a paragraph written back at your file.
Self performed work
CONTESTEDCarriers frequently strip general contractor O&P where the contractor self performs most of the work, arguing there was little coordination to pay for. We write what the file supports and document the coordination that happened. We do not call your adjuster about it and we do not promise the line survives.
RCV, ACV and what the first check funds
The arithmetic that decides your cashflow for three months.
RCV is the cost, not the check
RCVReplacement cost value is what it costs to replace the property today at the price list on the file. It is the number everyone quotes at each other and it is not what arrives first. The estimate produces the cost; the policy decides what portion is payable and when.
Depreciation, and the two kinds of it
ACVTaken against age over expected life and adjusted for condition, then subtracted from RCV to give actual cash value. Recoverable depreciation releases once work is completed and documented; non recoverable never comes back. Whether labor can be depreciated varies by policy language and jurisdiction and has been litigated both ways, so we name the treatment and leave the argument where it belongs.
Recoverable depreciation release final invoice
The last document on the claim, and the one assembled worst.
A final invoice that reconciles line for line
RELEASEThe release package usually needs a final invoice tying to the approved estimate line for line, a certificate of completion and completion photos. Where the work performed differs, the supplement that authorized it is referenced. Silent differences between estimate and invoice are the most avoidable reason a release stalls.
The summary page arithmetic
SUMMARYRCV, depreciation, ACV, deductible, prior payments and net claim sit on one page a desk adjuster reads before anything else. Two errors show up constantly: a deductible applied twice, and a prior payment left off. A slip there destroys the credibility of two hundred correct lines behind it, so both estimators check it.
Why estimates get kicked back, and what happens next
The first reviewer of your file is software. ESX files move through XactAnalysis, where automated rules run scope overlap and item inclusion checks and flag duplicates, pricing anomalies and missing information before a human opens anything. Internal consistency beats a bigger total.
What actually lands in your inbox, carrier ready ESX, PDF and the assumptions sheet
A carrier ready ESX file is the point of the exercise, but it is not the whole package and not the part you will read most. Here is every file, what it is for, and who can open it.
The file set
The same set on a single room water loss and on a multi building fire.
The ESX
THE NATIVE FILEThe working Xactimate file, which is what a carrier or TPA wants, because it opens and compares against their own scope rather than being retyped.
What it takes to open one, and whose file it is
An ESX needs an active Xactimate license to open or edit, so if you hold no seat the PDF is your readable version and the ESX is what you forward. The estimate carries your company as preparer and is released on delivery with no watermark, no lock and no expiry. There is no portal here, deliberately.
The PDF estimate report
READ ANYWHEREWhat your project manager, your insured and your office read without a license: line item detail with unit costs, grouped by room. The summary page carries RCV, depreciation, ACV, deductible, prior payments and net claim.
Sketch pages and the photo report
THE EVIDENCEThe sketch with dimensions and room names, and photos sitting against the scope they support rather than in the order the camera took them. Property overview first, then room by room in the estimate's own sequence.
The assumptions, inclusions and exclusions sheet
THE SCOPE RECORDOne page: price list version and effective date, what was assumed where evidence was thin, every question still open. We were not standing in the house, so unknowns are written down with what would resolve them rather than filled in with a plausible number.
Editable Excel or CSV
FOR JOB COSTINGThe line items as an unlocked spreadsheet, so your office can push scope into job costing or build a subcontractor scope sheet from it. Send your cost coding layout and the export comes back in it.
How the file moves, and what it lands inside
Where your estimate goes after you send it, and the rules waiting there.
XactAnalysis and the automated first read
REVIEWA file internally consistent between code, quantity, sketch and note passes cleanly to a human. A bigger total with loose internals gets flagged, and now a person opens it with a list of exceptions already in front of them.
TPA and direct repair program files
PROGRAM WORKProgram work carries mandated price lists, scope caps, cycle time targets, photo minimums and accuracy scoring, and a file that trips a rule costs you standing on the whole program rather than one job. Send the program rules at intake and the estimate is written inside them.
Carriers that do not use Xactimate
SYMBILITYSome carriers run Symbility, now under Cotality following the CoreLogic rebrand in March 2025. Xactimate is the tool this desk writes in and we will not pretend otherwise. Name the platform at intake and you are told during the quote, not after delivery.
See a redacted file set first
FREEA full file set with the claim details stripped out: the PDF and its summary page, a sketch page, line item detail with F9 notes visible, the photo report, the assumptions sheet and the spreadsheet export.
Open a redacted file setPut a storm month through a monthly partnership
The monthly queue runs your files first, with supplements ahead of new work and revisions included on unchanged scope. Tell us the claim volume you carry in a heavy month and it gets sized against that.
We write the estimate, you own the claim conversation
This is the section most of the category does not publish, and it is the one worth reading twice. What we will not do, who should not order this at all, and where doing it in house is simply cheaper.
We do not contact your adjuster. We do not negotiate, escalate or appear on a call with a carrier. In most states, negotiating a claim on behalf of an insured for a fee is public adjusting and requires a license, and where a contractor lets a vendor drift into that role the exposure lands on the contractor rather than the vendor. Half this category sells that service. We deliberately do not, and that is why we can be in your file at all.
There are files you should not send here. A single room Category 1 water loss your own estimator can write in forty minutes, in a week where their desk is not full, costs more to brief out than to write. If the carrier wants it tomorrow morning, 24 to 96 hours from approval does not make that, and this desk will not cut the second read to pretend it does. If you want somebody to argue the claim is worth more, that is a different profession with a different license.
There are things this service will not do inside a file we do write. We will not put a line in an estimate the documentation does not support, however certain you are it belongs. We will not apply overhead and profit where the file shows no coordination to justify it, because one stripped line takes the credibility of the whole estimate with it. We will not carry pre existing deterioration into a loss, and we promise no approval rates and no supplement outcomes.
What to send us, before we write a line
Nobody sends all of this and the file still gets written. But every missing item is either a question back to you or an assumption written onto the sheet, and both cost you time you would rather spend on the job.
Outsourced Xactimate estimator, per file, monthly or dedicated
The fee does not move with the size of the estimate. It is quoted from the work the file takes, approved in writing first, and it is the same fee whether the estimate lands at eleven thousand dollars or a hundred and ten thousand.
| Best for | A first file, or claims that arrive occasionally | A shop with claims running every week | Volume that justifies a person, not a hire |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commitment | None, one claim at a time | Flat monthly retainer | A monthly seat rather than a hire |
| Delivery | 24-96h from your written approval | 24-96h on a priority queue | 24-96h, your queue always first |
| Revisions | Included on unchanged scope | Included, supplements queued first | Included on unchanged scope |
| Who checks it | Two estimators, always | Two estimators, always | Your writer, plus an independent audit |
| What moves the fee | Room count and evidence quality | Volume, agreed monthly | The seat, not the file count |
| Typical saving | ~25-35% against writing it in house | ~40-55% against writing them in house | ~35-45% against a loaded in house seat |
Before you send the claim file
The questions restoration contractors and adjusters ask right before they upload a loss.
Cost and timing
The file itself
Money mechanics
Working with us
One claim file,
one fixed price
Send the loss, the photos and whatever documentation exists. An estimator reads it, names the price list, prices the work as one figure, and writes nothing until you approve that figure.