How DEC Fire & Water Regained 25 Hours a Week and Got 30% More Estimates Approved
DEC Fire & Water cut daily estimate entry from hours to minutes, and redirected that time into getting 30% more approvals
Restoration Contractor
200 Employees
Case Studies
Mar 6, 2026
Zach Gardner, CEO @ClaimsFlow
01
Intro
30%
More estimates approved
25
hours saved per week
Faster starts
PMs receive budgets right away
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 part-time 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 minutes — and redirected that 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:
Supplementing. DEC supplements nearly every estimate it receives. To do that, they compare their original DEC estimate side-by-side against the adjuster's approved estimate, identify the gaps, and add missing line items back in — bolded for the adjuster's review.
Budgeting. Once the estimate is in Xactimate, it gets imported into their CRM to generate job budgets — splitting costs into labor and materials. This determines what's available for subcontractors and how the P&L lands per job.
Without the conversion, neither supplementing nor budgeting can move forward.
02
Customer problem
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 work orders. 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."
03
Solution with ClaimsFlow
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 30% increase in approved estimates.
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."
04
What's next
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.
