We suffered damage from Hurricane Florence. The repairs are not yet completed. Both the insurance adjustor and the contractor use the same software program,"Exactimate", to figure and cost the repairs. So,it should be apples and apples. Right? Not in application. Each estimate item is sequentially numbered,#1 through the final item. Each area, room/hallway/stairs are set out individually. But,neither the adjustor nor the contractor organize the areas the same. And within the area the individual items are not in the same order. So, the contractor has his first area as being the kitchen with his #1 item being the floor. The adjustor has the kitchen as his third area and the floor being his 7th item under kitchen so the kitchen floor winds up being item # 68 on his sequentially numbered estimate but the contractor has it as number 1. Each estimate costs the job using Exactimates proprietary pricing for the region and time of year. Getting crosseyed yet? Subsequent "supplement"estimates use the then current Exactimate costing figures (higher or lower) instead of the original figures. And the contractor and the adjustor rearrange the order in which they list the areas and items from their prior iteration. So the contactor's second estimate is ordered differently from his first estimate,etc. His second estimate could have the kitchen as the 4th area with the floor being the 6th item under kitchen so the kitchen floor is now item number 118.Neither the contractor nor the adjustor can or will conform their estimates so that areas,items and numbers match each other sequentially. If anyone on the Board has experience with this Exactimate process and can shed some light on this arcane method of figuring and costing repairs to a house,please chime in. Maybe this puzzle is easier to figure than I'm seeing. Thanks!
...no experience with this particular software, but from your post, appears to be Exactimate issue. In order to do apples-to-apples, "area" and "item" (and whatever other sub-categories exist) need to be pre-defined lists of keywords that Exactimate can then sort into a standard hierarchical format, which would allow subsequent machine or human comparisons. This is basic programming logic, can't believe software doesn't have this capability...
Thanks for responding. Either the software does not have the capability or the contractor ,etc. do not know how to do this or does know how but do not want to take the time to implement.
