How DEC Fire & Water Regained 15 Hours a Week and Got 30% More Estimates Approved

Highlights

• Eliminated hours of manual entry: Reduced daily PDF conversion time from 3–4 hours to under 30 minutes.

• Saved 15 hours per week: Two team members now spend a fraction of their day on estimate entry, freeing time for higher-value work.

• Increased adjuster approvals by 30%: Freed-up time went directly to following up with adjusters — resulting in [XX dollar value of additional approved estimates] in additional approvals.

• Faster job starts: Project managers receive Xactimate files sooner, allowing work to start faster.

Overview

DEC Fire & Water Restoration is a family-owned restoration company based in Birmingham, Alabama. Founded in 1999, they handle the full range of property damage work — water, fire, smoke, mold, odor, and reconstruction — serving clients across Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia.

DEC processes 10–15 approved estimate PDFs every week. Each one needs to be converted into Xactimate — either to supplement the adjuster's scope or to generate a job budget. For a long time, that conversion was entirely manual, and it took up nearly all of Luke and Mason’s working hours.

"That's all I did here. I'd have a team member send me the insurance estimate, and then I would transfer every single line item from the PDF over into Xactimate."

— Mason Compton, DEC Fire & Water Restoration

With ClaimsFlow, Luke and Mason Compton cut that process from 2 hours per estimate to 5–10 minutes — and redirected the recovered time toward getting more estimates approved.

Why Every Estimate Goes Through Xactimate

At DEC, converting an insurance PDF to Xactimate is a requirement for nearly everything that happens downstream.

When an insurer sends an approved estimate, the team needs to mirror it exactly in Xactimate for two purposes:

1. Supplementing. DEC supplements nearly every estimate it receives. To do that, they compare their original scope side-by-side with the adjuster's approved estimate, identify the gaps, and add missing line items back in — bolded for the adjuster's review.

2. Budgeting. Once the estimate is in Xactimate, it gets imported into their CRM to generate job budgets — splitting costs into labor and materials — which determine what's available for subcontractors and how the P&L lands per job.

Without the conversion, neither supplementing nor budgeting can move forward.

The Bottleneck: 2 Hours Per Estimate, Every Day

Before ClaimsFlow, this conversion happened one line item at a time.

A team member would receive the approved PDF from the insurer, open it alongside Xactimate, and manually re-enter every line — quantities, descriptions, pricing — into a new estimate. At 2 hours per file, and with 2–3 estimates arriving daily, the process consumed most of the day.

"It would usually take 2 hours per estimate, and we'd have two to three a day. So, a long time."

Everything downstream waited on that entry. Project managers couldn't finalize budgets. Subcontractors couldn't receive scopes. Supplements couldn't be started. And as DEC's volume grew, it became clear that Luke and Mason wouldn't be able to keep pace.

"As we're expanding, it was gonna get to the point where we would not be able to handle the workflow. So ClaimsFlow kind of came in at a perfect time."

The Shift: From Data Entry to Adjuster Outreach

With ClaimsFlow, the same conversion now takes 5–10 minutes. Total daily estimate processing time dropped from 3–4 hours to under 20 minutes.

"Now we can just take that estimate, put it straight into ClaimsFlow, which spits out the ESX file, and then we can just straight up upload that ESX into Xactimate, and it gives us the exact estimate."

The recovered time didn't go to waste. Luke and Mason redirected it toward calling adjusters directly — following up on submitted supplements and pushing pending estimates to the top of the review queue.

"We've been able to start working with adjusters. We basically just call them to see where our estimate is, to get more approved. We've been able to get more approved estimates because we have the free time."

That shift in daily activity produced a measurable result: a 20–30% increase in approved estimates — $XX in additional revenue per month].

The impact also reached downstream. Project managers now receive Xactimate files sooner, so job budgets are finalized faster, subcontractors get their scopes earlier, and production can start without waiting on the office to catch up.

"The PMs are able to get jobs started quicker, and they know when supplements are needed sooner."

Looking Ahead

DEC is planning to expand ClaimsFlow access to their project managers, who will take over estimate mirroring as Luke and Mason transition out. For restoration contractors supplementing nearly every estimate they receive, the conversion step is upstream of everything — supplementing, budgeting, subcontractor coordination, and job starts all wait on it. When that step moves faster, the rest of the workflow follows.