Contents Estimation in Practice

As a professional contents estimator, the majority (if not all!) of your work day is spent using estimation software. If you are not currently utilizing estimation software, it is important that you continue reading to understand why it is essential for your role.

Contents estimation is a repetitive and challenging task. However, it plays a crucial role in homeowner's claims management, as it helps determine the value of damaged contents. Without reaching an agreement on contents value, settling the claim would be impossible.

Each day, you might:

• Review claims and their details.

• Determine item estimates and replacement costs.

• Analyze claim documentation.

• Prepare estimation reports.

A reliable estimating software should enable you to complete your entire job seamlessly. Today, we will delve deeper into how estimating software can assist you in determining item estimates and replacement costs more effectively. This aspect of your role often consumes a significant amount of time. By enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of your contents estimation, you can allocate your time and energy more effectively across your other tasks, allowing you to concentrate on what truly matters.

Challenges Faced by Contents Estimators

Residential contents estimators often encounter several challenges:

1. The use of manual estimation techniques, which can be time-consuming and difficult to scale.

2. The need to verify the credibility of sources to ensure accurate estimates.

3. Requests from adjusters and managers for price verification on estimates.

4. The need to redo estimates when insured individuals take action on a claim months after the initial estimation.

5. Finding replacement costs from only stores that the insured prefers to shop from.

What is Estimating Software?

Estimation software for residential insurance claims is specifically designed to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of valuing lost or damaged items. These software solutions are meant to assist and support you in your work, making it more efficient and accurate while reducing your effort. It's important to note that even with the use of AI, estimating software does not replace you as an estimator; there will always be a need for review and human input. Rather, it serves as a valuable tool to help you achieve better results.

Estimation software varies in their features and capabilities, with differences in estimation speed, level of accuracy, overall cost, integration with other systems, and user-friendliness. These factors contribute to the software's effectiveness in providing quality estimates.

These are the top 4 estimating software of 2024, compared by features that contribute directly towards accuracy, the most important metric for quality estimates.

How Has Estimation Software Addressed Estimator Challenges?

Manual Estimation Techniques

Surprisingly, many are still performing contents estimation either partially or fully manually. This includes:

• Google searching items and then copying and pasting their product information into a sheet.

• Using pre-filled or customized Excel sheets.

• Classifying items into groups and applying custom general pricing rules. 

Irrespective of the manual nature of your current estimation process, it is placing a burden on you and your team, resulting in slow turnaround times for your firm or clients. Estimates are taking days, weeks, or even months to complete, causing frustration among those awaiting your work.

A high-quality estimation software should alleviate these manual tasks and significantly improve your productivity, increasing your throughput by at least 2x. By adopting a reliable estimation software, your firm's item backlog is usually eliminated. Completing estimates within a day will alleviate the need for constant updates from your dependents, as their clients will be satisfied with the quick turnaround times.

Checking the Reputability of Stores & Pricing

When conducting online searches for product pricing, you may come across numerous stores offering similar products at varying prices. However, it's not always beneficial to choose the option that aligns with your firm's interests.

Let's consider a scenario where you were instructed to find the most expensive listing for a product. You discovered the priciest option and were tempted to assign it as the replacement price. Unfortunately, you later realized that the supplier was not reputable, rendering the source unreliable. Consequently, your firm had to redo the estimate, resulting in additional time and effort. This approach was followed for thousands of items, leading to a significant amount of work that needs to be redone.

High quality estimating software vets the reputability of all their suppliers and product information. 

By incorporating estimation software into your workflow, you can significantly decrease the number of revisions required, as you can rest assured that all the suppliers you have selected are reliable.

Verifying Your Prices

Estimates for high-value items often face scrutiny from both insurance carriers and policyholders, who may question whether the price is too high or too low. This is understandable, as both parties have their own motivations during settlement negotiations. However, estimates that lack a solid pricing foundation are more susceptible to pushback.

Fortunately, modern estimation software enhances the credibility of estimates by providing direct links to online stores where the products can be purchased. Adjust Square goes even further by including screenshots of the products along with the source links. This is crucial because source links can become outdated due to website updates, rendering them useless. By including screenshots, Adjust Square ensures that there is always verifiable evidence of the product's online presence at the specific date when the estimate was made.

The screenshot feature from Adjust Square captures details and prices of products, which adds more reliability to your estimate.

Prices Expire

Policyholders frequently get caught up in the process of recovering their losses and may not take action to settle the contents of their claim until months after you have completed the estimate. As a result, the replacement prices you assigned to their items may no longer be comparable to the current market prices they would need to repurchase their belongings. In such cases, it would be fair and best practice to re-estimate their claim.

This is precisely why some estimation software include a "price refresh" feature. This feature allows you to refresh some or all of the items within a claim, and the estimation software will re-perform its estimation abilities on the selected items. However, the accuracy of the re-estimate depends on the original estimation abilities of the software. For instance, if the estimation software is slow and inaccurate, refreshing the prices will result in a slow and inaccurate estimate, which will again require extensive review.

Hence, it is crucial to prioritize estimation software based on its accuracy. High accuracy reduces the amount of review work required from you.

The Refresh Prices feature is only as strong as the estimation software's accuracy. Here, we've compared top estimation software based on features that directly contribute to accuracy.

Insured's Preferred Suppliers

When a claim is initially assigned to you, it is common for the insured to provide a list of their preferred suppliers. During the adjuster's interview with the insured, they may inquire about where the insured typically purchases specific categories of products from:

• Infant & Baby Related Goods -> Pottery Barn, Barnes & Noble.

If you are manually searching for replacement prices on Google, you will need to allocate additional time and attention to selecting from specific online retailers. If you are using estimating software, you may need to review each replacement price to ensure it is from a store on the insured's list.

Currently, Adjust Square's AI Estimator stands out as the only estimating software that includes a preferred supplier feature. This feature allows you to input the insured's preferred supplier list, and the software will exclusively find replacement prices from the online retailers on the insured's list.

This will:

• Increase the overall accuracy of your estimate.

• Save you time from checking each item estimated.

• Give you piece of mind that all prices selected should satisfy the insured.

With Adjust Square's preferred suppliers feature, you have the flexibility to specify the suppliers from whom you want to source replacement costs for each category.

At this point, you might feel that you need to start using estimating software and that you want to check out the options available in the market right now.

Head over to our article where we help you determine Which Estimation Software is Right for You in 2024? or continue below to understand which estimating software is best suited for the everyday contents estimator.

Is there an Estimating Software that Has ALL of These Benefits?

Many estimating software options are capable of addressing the challenges faced by daily estimators in residential contents estimation. However, it is important to prioritize certain metrics based on their impact on your work and efficiency. Accuracy should be the highest priority metric, as it directly influences speed, cost, and ease of use.

While most estimating software may fulfill the common feature requirements, only a few actually prioritize improving accuracy. Traditional common features are not accurate enough, which is why many estimators still rely on manual estimation techniques.

Fortunately, new technology continues to emerge in the market. Adjust Square's AI Estimator was specifically designed with accuracy as the most important metric. As an estimator, you can automate many, if not all, of your manual tasks.

For instance, this means that simple items, such as a plastic squeegee, can be automatically estimated by AI Estimator, without your review. This allows you to focus your time on the more challenging estimations, where a skilled human estimator like yourself excels.

Conclusion

Do you now have a revised outlook on estimating software? I sincerely hope so! The latest estimating software available today is truly something to be enthusiastic about. It is designed to enhance your efficiency, eliminate unnecessary tasks, and support you in delivering your highest quality work.

Now that you have gained a comprehensive understanding, let's recap:

• The challenges that estimators commonly encounter.

• The definition and purpose of estimating software.

• How estimating software can enhance your efficiency and job satisfaction.

• The various features offered by different estimation software solutions, and why Adjust Square stands out as the most comprehensive option.

Perhaps you have been manually estimating contents throughout your entire career. It's possible that you have been contemplating for quite some time:

"Why are so many of these manual tasks still not automated?"

However, there have been significant advancements in the field. The solutions that you have longed for are now available. Elevate your work to new heights by signing up for Adjust Square today.