Estimating and project support
Estimating and project support for roofing contractors
Takeoffs, proposals, Xactimate scopes and supplements — the paperwork that decides how much of a job you keep.
Two moments in a roofing job decide how much of it you keep. The first is before anyone signs: what the takeoff says, what the proposal looks like when it lands, and how long the homeowner waited for it. The second is when the claim closes: whether the scope on paper matches the roof that actually got built.
Both moments are paperwork, and paperwork is what gets done last. It loses to a callback, a crew that is short a person, and a supplier who did not deliver. It gets done at night by whoever still has the energy, which is usually the owner, which is why it gets done late or not at all.
This department is the eight desks that sit at those two moments — measurement, takeoff, proposal, permit, claims administration, scope writing, supplement documentation and the estimating support around them. They are separable. Most companies start with whichever one is currently landing on the owner after the crews go home.
This page sets out what breaks when nobody runs them, where each failure lands in the job, and — the part most pages in this trade leave out — where our work stops and a licensed activity begins. Every figure below resolves against a primary source listed at the bottom.
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100+
Contracting companies supported
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9
Back office departments
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12
Platforms supported
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Roofing only
Send us the last proposal that went out late, or the claim that closed at the number it opened at.
Get in TouchWhat breaks when nobody does this
The failures in this department share a shape: none of them announce themselves. A missed call is obvious by lunchtime. A takeoff that was generous by a square is invisible until the job closes, and by then it is indistinguishable from a bad month.
The measurement never gets ordered, so the takeoff comes off an inspection photo and a memory of the ridge. The number gets padded to cover the uncertainty, which either loses the job to someone who did the arithmetic or wins it at a margin nobody checked afterwards.
The proposal goes out as a raw export with the company name typed at the top. It is legible to you and to nobody else. The homeowner reading it has never bought a roof before and is comparing it against one that explained itself.
The permit application sits in a folder because nobody was certain what that jurisdiction wanted attached. The crew is scheduled and the material is ordered, and the job cannot legally start.
The supplement never gets written. Writing one is slow, unglamorous, and competes directly with selling the next job. The file closes at the number it opened at. Nobody experiences this as a loss, because the money was never in the account to begin with — which is precisely why it keeps happening, and why it is the failure in this department that costs the most and shows the least.
The safety line gets dropped as padding. It is not padding. Fall protection on a roof is a federal duty with its own subsection for steep roofs, and the general threshold in construction begins at 6 feet above a lower level — a specific requirement with a definition behind it, which is exactly what makes it defensible as a line item rather than an argument.
Where this sits in the roofing job lifecycle
Three positions, and they are not equally dangerous. Two of them decide money and one of them decides schedule.
Before the contract — the bid window
The homeowner is collecting bids. Yours is not being compared against the best roof; it is being compared against the proposal that arrived first and the one that looked finished. What sits here is measurement ordered the day the inspection happens, a takeoff built off that measurement rather than off recollection, an estimate assembled in your system at your prices, and a proposal a person can read and sign. The failure here is a delay that reads, correctly, as a preview of how the job would run.
Between signing and the first truck — the permit
This one lands at neither money moment, which is exactly why it is the one that gets forgotten. The cost is not the permit fee. It is the crew day, the reschedule, and the call to a homeowner who took the day off work. Applications get filed against what that jurisdiction actually requires, with the documents it actually asks for, and tracked until the number comes back.
At claim close-out — the supplement window
On restoration work the scope gets written once, early, by someone standing on a roof with a tablet and a schedule to keep. What that scope misses is not wrong — it is incomplete, because decking condition, layer count and code-driven items are not all visible from an initial inspection. What sits here is claims administration that keeps the file current, scope written in the format the claim is adjudicated in, and supplements documented against what actually changed, with the photographs, measurements and references attached to the line they justify.
The compliance line
There is a line in restoration work between preparing a claim and adjusting one, and it is drawn by statute rather than by custom. Most pages in this trade do not mention it at all, which is not the same as it not applying.
Public adjusting is a licensed activity with a written definition. The model act published by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners defines a public adjuster as a person who, for compensation, acts on behalf of an insured in negotiating for or effecting the settlement of a first-party property claim — that is, the Public Adjuster Licensing Model Act. States write their own versions of that definition and they are not identical. One of them, Florida Statutes section 626.854, defines the activity and ties it to licensure.
A second thing worth knowing is that the restriction is not always aimed only at adjusters. At least one state places it on the contractor directly: Florida Statutes section 489.147, headed prohibited property insurance practices, opens with the clause that a contractor may not directly or indirectly engage in the practices it then lists. That makes the boundary a contractor-side question, not only an insurer-side one.
So here is where our work stops, stated plainly. We prepare, document and assemble. We build the scope in the format the claim is adjudicated in, attach the evidence that justifies each line, keep the file current and hand it to you. We do not negotiate the settlement, we do not represent the insured in that negotiation, and we do not hold ourselves out as adjusters. That work belongs to the licensed party.
That line is not a limitation on what you receive. It is the reason the file is worth having. A scope that is complete, evidenced and internally consistent does its work on its own merits, and it does not put the contractor who submitted it on the wrong side of a licensing question to do it. The preparation is where the value was the whole time; the negotiation was never the part that needed a back office.
What the Xactimate credential does and does not mean
The certification is held. What that means is narrow and worth saying plainly: the scope is written in the format the claim is adjudicated in, by a party trained in that format. It is a statement about the preparation, which is the side of the line our work sits on.
What it does not mean is any particular outcome, and this page will not imply one. There are no recovery rates here, no average supplement figures and no percentages — not because they would not be persuasive, but because we would have to invent them. Figures like that are quoted constantly in this corner of the market and sourced almost never. Every number on this page instead resolves against something you can open and read. What can actually be checked is the work: the scope, the documentation and the state of the file.
This section describes where our work stops and points at the primary sources it rests on. It is not legal advice, it does not tell you whether any particular arrangement is compliant, and the rules differ from state to state. A question about your own state and your own contracts belongs with your own counsel.
What sits inside this department
Eight desks. Take one, take the pre-contract group, take the claim-side group, or take the department. The scope is written down before anyone starts.
Tell us which of the two windows is costing you more, and we will tell you what covering it looks like as a written scope of work.
Get in TouchWhere this work happens
In your systems. Estimating and measurement in this trade are spread across a handful of tools and most companies use more than one — a roofing CRM for the job record, a measurement provider for the roof, and the claim format for restoration files. We work in the ones you already run rather than asking the company to move so the back office is comfortable.
- AccuLynx
- Roofr
- Xactimate
- EagleView
- HOVER
- RoofScope
Roofing Back Office is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or certified by any software vendor named on this site. All product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
How this starts
Three steps, and the first two happen before you commit to anything.
A discovery call
We go through what actually happens now — who writes the estimate, where it lives, what a supplement looks like today, what is open and stuck. The useful version of this call is specific: the last proposal that went out late, the last claim that closed short.
A written proposal
Which desks we would cover, what the deliverable is for each, what stays with your team, and what the reporting cadence looks like. It is a scope of work rather than a quote for a person, and it is the document we are held to afterwards.
An implementation call
Access, the current inventory of open estimates and open claims, and the order we pick them up in. Work already in flight stays in flight — there is no cutover date where old files are abandoned. The first reporting cycle goes out on the cadence the proposal named.
Why Roofing Back Office for this department
Because this department is where a general back office stops being general. Bookkeeping is bookkeeping in any trade. A roofing supplement is not — it depends on knowing that decking condition is not visible at inspection, that a code-driven item needs its reference attached to survive review, and that the scope has to be legible in the format the claim is adjudicated in rather than in the format your CRM prints.
We took the roofing work out of a general contractor back office and gave it its own brand for exactly that reason. Supplements, storm surges, aerial measurements and claim documentation are not a general workflow with different nouns in it.
What you manage is an outcome and a scope of work. The function runs, the reporting arrives, and the decisions that are genuinely yours come to you as decisions — not as a pile of paperwork waiting for you to get to it.
Questions owners ask about this department
Where exactly does your work stop on a claim?
At preparation and documentation. We build the scope in the format the claim is adjudicated in, attach the photographs, measurements and code references that justify each line, and keep the file current. We do not negotiate the settlement and we do not represent the insured in that negotiation — that is a licensed activity and it belongs to the licensed party. The section above sets out the line and the primary sources behind it.
What is actually in the file when you hand it over?
A written scope, the measurement it was built from, a photograph set indexed to the line items it supports, any code or manufacturer reference a line depends on, and a record of what changed and when. The test we hold it to is whether somebody who was never on that roof can follow the reasoning from the damage to the line item without calling you.
We already have an estimator. What would you be doing?
Usually the part of their week that is not estimating. Ordering measurements, assembling proposals, chasing the documents a file is missing, keeping supplements moving after the initial scope is written. Companies that already have a strong estimator most often hand us the claim-side documentation and keep retail estimating where it is.
How do you build a scope for a roof you did not inspect?
From the measurement and the photograph set your crew or inspector captured, plus whatever the adjuster documented. Where the evidence does not support a line, the line does not go in — it goes on a list of what someone needs to photograph on the next trip. A scope built past the evidence is the fastest way to lose credibility on every other line in the file.
What happens on a file that has already been denied or underpaid?
We inventory what the file actually contains against what the scope claims, and identify where the documentation gaps are. Sometimes the answer is that a re-inspection is needed before anything else is worth doing. We do not promise an outcome on a reopened file, and any figure you have seen attached to that promise elsewhere did not come with a source.
Do you need logins to our systems?
To yours, yes — we work in the platform your jobs already live in rather than moving them. Access is scoped to what the work needs and no further. If estimating happens in one platform and the job record in another, we work in both.
Can you file permits in a jurisdiction you have not worked in before?
Yes. The first one in a new jurisdiction takes longer because the requirements have to be read rather than recalled — what that authority wants attached, in what form, and how it wants it submitted. After that it is a repeatable process and it goes in the written scope of work so the second one is not a rediscovery.
Learn more
- All nine departments What else a roofing back office covers, and the failure each department absorbs.
- Compliance and Documentation Certificates, registrations and preliminary notices — the deadlines that end a remedy.
- CRM and Job Management Where the estimate lands once it is written, and why stale stages hide finished work.
- Finance and Bookkeeping Job costing that arrives while the next bid is still winnable.
- Dispatching and Operations Material, crews and purchase orders once a proposal turns into a signed job.
- Customer Support The phone that has to be answered before any of this becomes an estimate.
- Working in Xactimate How scopes are built and supplements documented in the claim format.
- Working in AccuLynx Estimating and job records inside a roofing CRM.
- Working in Roofr Measurement-driven proposals and template management.
- Every platform we work in The full set, and what working inside your instance means in practice.
- Storm and claims operations Longer pieces on documentation, scope discipline and surge weeks.
- About Roofing Back Office Who runs this, and why the roofing work got its own brand.
Sources
Every figure and every regulatory statement on this page resolves against one of these. They are cited by identifier from the brand configuration rather than typed in, so a citation that stops resolving fails the build instead of rotting quietly.
- Public Adjuster Licensing Model Act — National Association of Insurance Commissioners
- Florida Statutes section 626.854 — Public adjuster defined — Florida Legislature
- Florida Statutes section 489.147 — Prohibited property insurance practices — Florida Legislature
- 29 CFR 1926.501 — Duty to have fall protection — U.S. Office of the Federal Register (eCFR)
Model-code roofing provisions are named in prose where a statement needs them and are deliberately not linked: the publisher serves the chapter behind a subscription gate, so a link would resolve without showing a reader the text it claims to cite.
Start with the desk that is costing you most
You do not have to take the department. Tell us whether it is the bid window or the supplement window, and we will come back with what covering it looks like and what the scope of work would say.