Writing a supplement, in theory, is not as difficult as some people and companies make it out to be. So what is a supplement? A supplement simply a contractor’s bid. What is negotiating? It’s defending that bid as an insurance restoration contractor. No more no less, it’s pretty simple. Our industry is changing and supplement companies and contractors that supplement in-house are not changing. In fact, most just follow the insurance companies lead in writing and Xactimate. I’m not sure why we, the industry, decided that we need to create our bids and defend them in the big business insurance company software, Xactimate and now Symbility. Why are we still doing this? From my perspective there’s three ways to supplement right now in the industry.
The first way is to supplement in the big business insurance company software. Software that doesn’t even have all the line items integrated to write a good estimate. What’s their solution? To make it a bid item with some F9 notes and of course they’d say that. This is the way that the insurance companies can control their checkbook, 22.4 million dollar bonus for a CEO this year. These adjusters are both trained in writing an estimate and Xactimate, and they’re also trained to deny and defend their Xactimates that they write as well.
So the second option is to write your bid on a QuickBooks or even on a sheet of paper it doesn’t matter. This way is much better than Xactimate and you can tell your project’s story and defend your bid against a trained adjuster in Xactimate. This way does have quite a few issues if you’re scaling. It takes a ton of time in writing, and communicating with insurance companies is a time-sucking machine. You also have to have an ear on the door of the insurance companies knowing what they will and won’t approve. It’s all about wording guys. Oh yeah you must be a professional at not getting frustrated with the adjusters and that might honestly be the most difficult part.
The third option is Claim Juicer. We create supplements in our own software, it outlines all of the supplement items needed for your specific project. It combats pricing issues, it pre-overcomes desk adjuster objections. See, a Claim Juicer supplement is based on descriptions, not a single line item like you’d see in Xactimate. Created within 72 hours with a 36.8 percent new money average all for a flat fee, no percentage based pricing. We have a solution to take supplementing off of your plate if you need hand supplementing send me an email at info@claimjuicer.com, but stop supplementing an Xactimate write it down if you have to.