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The Estimating System
How Restoration Bidding Software Works
What a system like Craig's likely consists of, and where our walkthrough tool plugs in.
One honest note before the tour
Craig's specific estimating system is still unconfirmed. He estimates inside some system today, and Anton is asking him which one. Nothing on this page claims to know his setup. What follows is the standard shape of restoration bidding software: the parts nearly every system in this category has, and the way a job normally moves through them.
The Parts
What it consists of
Strip away the brand names and restoration estimating software is a handful of working parts that fit together. Each one exists because insurance work has to be priced in a defensible way, the same way every time, no matter who writes the scope.
The line-item price database
Thousands of priced tasks: baseboard removal per linear foot, drywall per square foot, a dehumidifier per day in place. Each line carries a unit, a plain description, and a price that is updated from regional price lists, so a scope is priced at current rates for this market. This is the layer that turns a scope into a number, and it is the layer nobody should invent.
Room-by-room sketch and measurements
Every affected room gets drawn and measured: dimensions, openings, materials. The quantities in a scope come out of that sketch, so twelve feet of baseboard in the estimate is a measured twelve feet on the wall, not a guess from a photograph.
Scope templates by loss type
A burst pipe, a kitchen fire, and a mold job each start from a template of the lines that kind of work normally includes: containment, removal, treatment, drying, verification. The estimator edits the template against what each room actually needs and deletes what does not apply.
Insurance math built in
On insurance work, the software handles depreciation on materials and the overhead and profit lines carriers expect to see itemized. Self-pay work is kept separate, because the two kinds of jobs follow different pricing conventions and different paperwork.
Documentation on the same job file
Photos, moisture readings, and field notes attach to the estimate itself. When a carrier questions a line item, the evidence for that line is already on the job file instead of sitting in a camera roll on somebody's phone.
Outputs for each audience
One job file produces the documents each reader needs: a plain-language estimate for the homeowner, a documentation pack for the insurer, and an internal scope sheet for the crew doing the work. Same numbers, three renderings.
Job management and sync
The estimate is one stage of the job, not a separate island. The customer record, the schedule, and the job status travel with it, and every revision of the estimate is kept with its date. That version history is what lets anyone reproduce, months later, exactly which number a homeowner saw and approved.
The Workflow
How a job flows through it
The loss is reported
A call comes in and a job file opens: the property, the type of loss, the date, and the first photos from the homeowner or the first visit.
Rooms are measured and sketched
A technician walks the property, takes moisture readings, and builds the room-by-room sketch that every quantity in the scope will come from.
The scope is priced
Line items are selected from the database against each room and priced at the current regional rates, then checked line by line against the rooms.
Insurance adjustments are applied
Depreciation and overhead and profit are applied where the job calls for them, and the estimate is reconciled against the scope before it leaves the office.
The estimate goes out
The homeowner receives a plain-language estimate and the carrier receives the documentation pack, both generated from the same job file.
Supplements follow the work
When walls open and the damage runs further than the photos showed, the scope is revised, the change is documented, and the estimate updates as a supplement instead of being rewritten from scratch.
The Connection
Where our walkthrough plugs in
Our walkthrough tool feeds the front of this pipeline. A homeowner or a technician records the damage, the system drafts findings and a scope written in the same line-item language the price database uses, and that draft lands in front of Craig for review. He edits it inside the system he already works in, and his rates produce the number. No figure reaches a homeowner before that review.
Our draft speaks line items so it can map to whatever Craig already uses. We are not replacing his software; we are feeding it.
The handoff, step by step
The walkthrough and photos come in first, with a short structured intake. The AI drafts the scope. Craig reviews, edits, and approves the draft, or sends it back. Only then does the priced estimate get built, inside his system, at his rates.
The clickable demo runs a sample job through exactly this front end, with the price layer deliberately empty.
What we know, and what we do not
For reference, the most common example of this kind of software in insurance restoration is Xactimate. We do not know whether it is the system behind Craig's estimates. Anton is asking him directly, and his answer decides the exact mapping. It does not change the design, because the draft is built from line items either way.
The human gates stay where the plan puts them: the evidence is checked, the draft is reviewed at a desk, the scope is verified on site, and a signed authorization comes before any work starts.
Your Turn
What we still need from Craig
Four answers turn this general explainer into an exact design for Craig's operation:
The name of his current system
Which software he estimates in today decides how our draft scope maps into it, field by field.
A rate card, or past jobs
Either his rate card itself, or an export of a few completed jobs with their scopes and final prices, so real rates can be derived together with him.
His job rules
Minimum job charge, after-hours and emergency handling, travel limits, and how tax is treated on self-pay work.
His red lines
The items he will never price from photos, no matter what a draft suggests. Those become hard stops built into the tool.
See the Front End Working
The walkthrough demo shows a sample job moving from recorded damage to a reviewed draft scope, stopping at exactly the point where Craig's system takes over.
Open the Walkthrough Demo