The Xactimate Scope-Writing Checklist Verisk Already Published

Open the Inspection results drawer on an estimate you thought was finished, and Xactimate will tell you, in Verisk's own words, what it dislikes about your scope. One rule in the published library reads: "Bid item warrants F9 Note explanation that includes the word 'bid'."² Not documentation in general. Not a supporting file sitting somewhere in the claim folder. A note on that line, containing three specific letters, because the engine is matching the string.

2,117 rules, 36 of which name an artifact

Verisk publishes the entire rules library as a downloadable spreadsheet, which means the checklist a carrier's software runs against your estimate is a public document. The July 2026 edition holds 2,117 unique rule names across 92 Xactimate category codes, with 431 rules tagged to more than one code.²

Most of it is arithmetic. 521 rules, just under a quarter of the library, are congruence checks that look for quantity mismatches, exceedances, incongruent values and discrepancies.² Another 162 touch overhead and profit, 85 touch minimum charges, 67 hunt duplicate or overlapping line items. You clear those by sketching accurately instead of typing quantities, and when it works nobody notices.

Thirty-six rule names go further. Thirty-one of them name an F9 note, eight name a photo or image, and three name both, which makes them the slice of the library a public adjuster can pre-clear by hand before submission, and they cluster in roofing and water.²

The counts have limits. Rule counts measure where Verisk has written the most checks, not where claims are most often disputed, and a trade can be heavily policed by software while rarely being argued in the field. The rules are also configurable. Instance admins enable and edit them in XactAdmin, and Verisk ships a separate 105-rule "Legacy Rules - Free" sheet alongside the full library, so the exact set firing against your file depends on whose profile it lands in.

Before you leave the office

Coverage association is an argument you can lose before you put a ladder on the truck.

Claim Info opens on Coverages & Loss: claim and policy number, type and cause of loss, CAT code, policy type, and the four coverage rows Xactimate creates for you, Dwelling, Other Structures, Contents and Loss of Use. Set the deductible deliberately, across all coverages or coverage-specific. XactXpert carries "Blank coverage name" and "Coverage sublimits review" as estimate-wide rules, and neither of them guesses your intent.²

One line in Xactware's own documentation removes the tab entirely for some users: "Coverages & Loss is not available for the Contractor profile."⁶ A PA working inside a contractor profile has no coverage association to do.

Parameters holds Depreciation Options, and it holds more switches than most people touch. Five independent toggles govern whether you depreciate material, non-material, removal, overhead and profit, and sales tax, alongside a maximum depreciation percentage and a default recoverable or non-recoverable setting.⁴ Measurement runs by Age/Condition, Percent or Amount, with the shipped default being recoverable depreciation calculated by age and condition. If Depreciation by Coverage Type is active for your instance and for the state on the project address, those options split into Structural, Contents and Other Structures Depreciation; if it is not active, depreciation applies equally across every coverage type.⁴

Those defaults may not be yours to set. Profile owners and instance admins set depreciation defaults in XactAdmin, each option carries a lock icon, and Xactware states that once an admin sets them, "users can no longer set them in Xactimate." A profile owner's change applies immediately to current and future estimates on that profile. Verisk attaches its own caution to the whole feature: "Not all insurance carriers and regulatory agencies allow for every type of depreciation."⁴

The roof, in the order the rules read it

Roof variables come off the Sketch roof rather than off a typed number: SQ, SF, P and R at Level 1, held in place with Measurement Locks and Roof Annotations, then VAL, HIP, EAVE, RAKE and Roof Overbuild at Level 2, then RSQ and complex multi-level roofs at Level 3.¹ RFG carries 314 rules, second only to WTR.²

Underlayment is where Verisk stops hinting. The roofing category names felt by weight and type, and puts the missing artifact in the rule title itself:²

• "30lb. felt without line item F9 note"
• "30lb. felt without line item photo"
• "30lb. felt without line item photo and F9 note"
• "Double coverage felt without line item F9 note"
• "Double coverage felt without line item photo"
• "Double coverage felt without line item photo and F9 note"
• "Synthetic felt without line item F9 note"
• "Synthetic felt without line item photo and F9 note"

Edge metal gets softer wording, "Drip edge may warrant an F9 note and documentation" and "Ice & water barrier may warrant photograph", but the remedy is the same twenty seconds of typing and one photo taken from the ladder rather than from the truck.²

Waste is the other roofing fight. Use the documented convention, SQ1.15 for roofing and F1.15 for floor, instead of hand-typing an uplift, and check whether auto-calculate has already picked up the starter row. Verisk wrote a rule for each way that goes wrong: "Duplicate roof waste" and "Auto-calculate waste for roofing items is set to include starter row".² Both waste conventions are tested at Level 2, and roof waste returns at Level 3.¹

Interior rooms: quantities, grade, and the F9 habit

Water losses are the most heavily policed scope a public adjuster writes. Grouped by the room you are standing in, water damage, cleaning and remediation account for 716 rule tags across the library; WTR on its own carries 354 rules, more than any other single category code.²

The WTR rule names read like a transcript of every desk pushback on a mitigation invoice, and each one names its own cure:²

• "HEPA vacuuming on CAT 1 or 2 and no F9 Note"
• "WTR EQDH warrants approval and an F9 Note"
• "Ozone or deodorization items may warrant F9 note and adjuster approval"
• "After hours water mitigation service call may warrant an F9 note"
• "Drying furnace warrants F9 notations/explanations"
• "Equipment decontamination - heavy may warrant F9 note/explanations when used"

The July 2026 edition added more in the same territory, including "Air mover runtime quantity of 1" and "Dehumidifier runtime quantity of 1", which is the engine asking why a piece of drying equipment shows a single unit of runtime.²

Room shells are quieter and more consequential. Drive walls, ceiling and floor off Sketch variables, F, PF, W, WC, C and PC at Level 1 and LL, HH, SH and V at Level 2, rather than typing quantities that will not reconcile later.¹ Congruence is a quarter of the rules library. Typed numbers are how you volunteer for it.

Flooring carries 373 rule tags, with wood alone at 152, and the rule names tell you where to pre-empt: "Partial flooring replacement may warrant F9 note" and "Glue down add on items warrant F9 note".²

Grade selection takes one sentence to justify, and it gets skipped anyway. Verisk maintains six estimate-wide rules on it, one structural and one contents for each of High, Premium and Deluxe, every one of them phrased "may warrant F9 note/explanations when used".² Minimums get harsher treatment: 85 rules mention them, among them "Duplicate minimums", "Excessive minimum charges", "Labor minimums tab review" and roughly twenty trade-specific duplicate-minimum checks.²

Two rules drop "may warrant" and use "requires" instead. "Bid Items Require F9 Note" and "Code Upgrade Coverage requires F9 note" are Verisk's own grammar, and the second is why a code-upgrade line with no cited code section gets struck without an argument.²

The mechanic is small. Select the line, press F9 or double-click the note icon in the Quick entry pane, pick Note, Image, Sound or Document from the dropdown, and leave "Attach to previous item" selected so the evidence rides with the line instead of the cover email.¹¹ Twenty seconds, at the moment you pick the item.

Before you mark it Complete

XactXpert sorts what it finds into three tiers, and only one of them is optional. "Violation errors must be resolved before the estimate can be marked Complete. Alerts under Required fields are always Violations."³ Warnings are negotiable on your terms: "You can either fix the cause of the Warning or write a bypass note explaining the missing information or other errors." Cautions "do not require any action, and only appear to keep the user informed."³

A bypassed Warning leaves your explanation in the file. Write it for a stranger reading the claim in six months, because that is who reads it.

Depreciation fails more quietly than a Violation does, since nothing turns red when it does. Xactware's article on why depreciation is not calculating lists the causes: the item has no life expectancy because no category and selector were chosen; condition is set to New; the Repl check box is ticked, which strips depreciation because it indicates the insurer will replace the item directly; the policy is ACV, which forces non-recoverable; or maximum depreciation is sitting at 0% with none of the Depreciate boxes selected.⁷ The per-item figures themselves come from life-expectancy tables Verisk names openly, the Joint Military Industry Depreciation Guide, the National Association of Home Builders and the US General Services Administration, viewable per item by right-clicking through to View Item Information.⁸

Note visibility is easy to read backwards. Xactware's answer runs three sentences and needs all three: "External notes are included on all relevant reports. Internal notes can be excluded so they do not appear on customer reports. However, internal notes will be included in data sent through XactAnalysis and are a permanent part of the claim."⁵ Internal means hidden from your client's copy. It does not mean private from the carrier.

The report coversheet shows the price list you actually priced on, along with estimate type, dates, and estimator and company information, which settles the out-of-date-price-list objection without a phone call. General quote prices update monthly and are area-specific down to the zip code; vendor-specific pricing data updates nightly. Verisk qualifies its own cadence, though: a monthly update does not mean every price was freshly surveyed that month.⁹

The file also remembers. Xactware's estimate-reports documentation describes two audit reports available as print selections: the Ownership audit, which logs who signed into the estimate, when, and the item count and estimate total at each end of the session, and the Estimate audit trail, which shows dates and times of all updates, beginning and ending prices, and the percentage of any change.¹⁰

Notes appear as a named competency only at Level 3, which is Verisk's own read on the skill: it treats systematic note discipline as a mastery-level habit.¹ Everything else in this checklist sits a level lower. Line Item Attachments, Depreciation Options, Coverage Association, the waste conventions and Correct Inspection Violations are all Level 2 competencies, which means a Level 2 estimator has already been tested on every artifact the rules engine asks for.¹

You do not need a certificate to write a file the desk cannot pick apart, which is exactly why reading the published rules beats guessing at them, and why the folklore version of this checklist keeps costing people money it did not have to. Verisk has already written the real one down and left it on the internet: 2,117 rule names saying what the software objects to, thirty-six of them naming the artifact that closes the objection, plus a certification spec and a help library that quote their own thresholds.² Print the thirty-six. Work them in field order, from the coverage tab before you leave the office to the Inspection results drawer before you submit, and the estimate lands already answering the questions the desk was going to ask.

Field questions