Sketch is the estimate's ground truth. Now you can rebuild it from a PDF.

You receive a large loss PDF estimate. You review the estimate, and you realize there's no paint masking; there's no sanding and refinishing the wood floors.

You want to add those items to the estimate, and share back with your counterparty for their review. However, to do that, you need to recreate their estimate, and their estimate is built on a sketch that's printed on page 24. You're stuck.

Sketch is the ground truth for the estimate

Sketch represents the physical property. Sketch, in fact, is the only part of the estimate that maps to actual reality. Everything else could be considered subjective - the scope of the loss, the necessary repair line items, the prices. Not the Sketch.

Therefore, the estimate stands upon the Sketch. The square footage of flooring, the linear feet of baseboard, the wall area for paint: every material or repair action traces back to a room and its specific dimensions.

In effect, this means that two different sketches represent two different realities. When you and your counterparty have two different sketches, you're no longer disputing a number or a missing line item or scope. You're putting forth estimates that do not share the same ground truth. This makes negotiation difficult.

Working off a different sketch is working off a different estimate.

Negotiating effectively requires that you work off the same estimate. This means you need to use the same Sketch.

Problem: Sketch is locked within the PDF

The issue is that it's not easy to recreate the Sketch from the PDF. There are dense schematics, overlapping labels, and dimension lines that cross the exact measurements you're trying to understand. Reading another estimator's sketch is hard enough. Reproducing it is worse.

You could go measure the property and draw your own. However, that option isn't always available - and it adds cycle time, and thrash, and cost.

Introducing Sketch PDF to Xactimate.

ClaimsFlow now converts Sketch PDFs to Xactimate ESX.

With ClaimsFlow, you can quickly recreate the Sketch from the PDF estimate. You can adopt the Sketch, edit the Sketch, without having to spend hours rebuilding and matching.

With ClaimsFlow Sketch Conversion, you can supplement or adjust an estimate when the work is warranted, without having to consider the steep time tax required to rebuild the Sketch and line items.

More importantly, by adopting the PDF's Sketch, you now have access to the estimate for revisions and supplements. This means that you can supplement based upon whether the work is warranted, without having to consider the steep manual time tax required to rebuild the Sketch and estimate line items.

Change the estimate based upon the work required

The paint masking is a valid repair that was missed on the PDF estimate. However, 8 hours of manual work stands between noticing it, and being able to say so on the estimate.

Recreating the Sketch and line items is often the precondition for having the discussion at all. When the Sketch is easy to reproduce, the cycle is so much faster and smoother.

Other articles:

• SKETCH FAQs