Xactimate is the software most carriers use to build restoration estimates, and its output can look intimidating: pages of line items, cryptic codes, and columns for RCV, depreciation, and ACV. You don't have to write one to review one — you just need to know what the estimate is claiming and how to check a contractor's bid against it.
Read it as a scope, not a price
Each line is a unit of work with a category code, a quantity, a unit price, and a total. The value to you isn't the grand total — it's the list of work the carrier agreed to pay for. That list is your baseline scope. Every bid you collect should account for the same work.
Where money hides
- Line items the carrier paid for that a contractor's bid quietly leaves out — that's paid-for-but-omitted work.
- Depreciation you may recover later (the ACV vs. RCV gap) that makes a bid look unaffordable today.
- 'Detach & reset,' debris, and code items buried mid-estimate that contractors love to skip.
- Missing quantities — an estimate that undercounts square footage undercounts your settlement.
Compare bid-to-estimate, line by line
The single most useful move is to lay each contractor bid next to the Xactimate estimate and mark what matches, what's missing, and what's extra. Missing lines are your out-of-pocket risk; extra lines are a supplement you'll have to get approved. In 26 years I've never seen a clean settlement come from a bid that didn't reconcile to the carrier estimate.
BidsScores does this reconciliation automatically — it reads the carrier estimate and every bid, flags omitted-but-paid scope, and shows your real out-of-pocket number.