Guide for Restoration Contractors
The Restoration Contractor's Guide to Estimatics
How restoration crews document water, fire, and mold jobs so the scope survives review — findings tied to photographs, dimensions from a scan, and a mold assessment that reaches the estimate.
3 min read
The work is fine; the file is what gets disputed
Carriers question timelines, challenge readings, and cut line items — usually not because the work was wrong, but because the evidence behind it wasn't organized, wasn't tied to anything, and arrived three weeks later.
Capture that organizes itself
Photograph each affected area from the iOS app, assigning shots to rooms as you go. Media syncs while you're on site, and keeps working with no signal — basements, crawlspaces, rural properties. Everything uploads when you're back in range.
Record video where a still can't carry it: an active leak, a whole-floor walkthrough.
Findings that name what you're looking at
Run the analysis and each piece of damage comes back structured — damage type across thirteen categories including Water, Mold, Fire, and Smoke; severity from low to critical; the material affected; the location; and an evidence note that tells you what weakens the finding as well as what supports it.
You confirm, correct, or delete. What goes out is yours.
Dimensions from the scan
LiDAR turns each room into a floor plan with real numbers — floor area, perimeter, wall area, ceiling height, openings. Those drive the quantities in your estimate rather than a tape measure and a transcription. On every plan, including FIELD.
Mold assessments that reach the estimate
Upload a mold assessment document and Estimatics extracts the IICRC S520 / NORMI condition per area:
- Condition 3 — actual growth, visible or confirmed by sampling
- Condition 2 — settled spores or contamination without growth
- Condition 1 — normal fungal ecology
Where the document states a condition, that number is used; where it only describes findings, the description is mapped and flagged for review. You then confirm area by area, mapping each assessed area to a room on the job — and the confirmed condition lands on that room's loss context and projects into the estimate.
Document analysis for non-policy types requires SCOPE.
Scope and pricing
Flag findings with +Scope and the AI builds the line items. Regional pricing returns a reference unit price for the property's ZIP code and shows its sources — a number you can defend, not one you have to accept.
Delivering
Compose a report — Damage, Findings, Geometry, or Custom on any plan; Estimate, Analysis, or Complete on SCOPE. Or export ESX into Xactimate, $10 per export, available today on every plan.
Which plan
| FIELD | SCOPE | |
|---|---|---|
| Capture, LiDAR, AI findings, scope, regional pricing | Yes | Yes |
| Damage, Findings, Geometry, Custom reports | Yes | Yes |
| ESX export | $10 | $10 |
| AI damage narrative | — | Yes |
| Branded reports, Estimate report type | — | Yes |
| Mold assessment and document extraction | — | Yes |
| AI Copilot | — | Yes |
| Video length | 5 min / 2 GB | 10 min / 4 GB |
FIELD for small crews. SCOPE for operations working insurance claims — that's where the mold and document extraction lives, along with the written report.
Getting started
- Install the iOS app and create a job
- Capture the affected areas and scan them with LiDAR
- Run the analysis and confirm the findings
- Build the scope, compose the report, submit
Request a demo to see it on a water job.
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