Thread: Xactimate estimate or bill?

If your in the restoration business you need to know how to prepare a proper bill to get paid properly. If you don’t do it properly your not getting paid fairly. I work in xactimate every day. I go against the insurance companies adjuster every day. Most insurance adjuster have know idea what it is exactly that you or doing or how it is done properly. To get paid properly document every thing they say a photo is worth a thousand words will in this business it is worth a thousand dollars. If you document and prepare a bill you will get paid in a timely manner. If you give them an estimate that means you will settle for less I what I prepare is a detailed itemized bill big difference and estimate is what your hoping to get paid a bill is what you will take for payment for your services.

Great post Ron let me add folks when you discount work also give a detail invoice and then show your discount.

The restoration companies I do there billing for we never give a discount and get paid the full bill. Never let the insurance company’s adjuster tell you what is needed to be done. Document everything, I tell everyone invest in a thermal image camera, if you document everything your daily drying charts, hour log on the equipment running and go in and video all equipment every day show moisture readings either photo or on video and open a dialogue with the adjuster as a professional courtesy. You’re the professional, his job is to pay you as little as possible your job is to do the job correctly it is not stealing or cheating if you in the restoration business and your worried about if the adjuster isn’t going to like your bill or you cut your drying time short or take a short cut it will catch up to you. Floor plates once they get wet take a long time to dried out, you need to use a hammer probe on them two more days drying usually to get them to the right level. I don’t do restoration work any more but I review a lot of water damage jobs that where preformed on my clients home and if it is not done right or documented right it opens doors as a restoration company you don’t want opened. The restoration companies I do their billing for enjoy a much larger payday. In the end your there to services the client i.e. the property owner not the insurance adjuster or carrier.

The ability to produce accurate estimates in a timely manner is probably the most compelling reason for a construction firm to computerize in the first place. Streamlining this otherwise loathsome process was certainly the driving force behind my buying my first computer. When a client asked me to re-bid a job for the third time, I gritted my teeth and cheerfully obliged, and in so doing, I inadvertently deducted the cost of a $3600 bay window, twice. When I was faced with having to eat the cost of the window, suddenly the expense of new hardware and software was easier to justify.