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July 30, 2026 · 3 min read

What Is Xactimate? A Property Manager's Plain-English Guide

JA

Joshua Aponte

Founder of BidsScores · 26 years in restoration estimating

Xactimate is the industry-standard software insurance carriers and restoration contractors use to build repair estimates. If you manage property, you'll receive its output after a loss — pages of line items, category codes, and RCV/ACV columns.

What you actually need from it

You don't need to operate the software. You need to read the estimate as a scope of work: the list of repairs the carrier agreed to pay for, at what quantities. That list is your baseline — the yardstick every contractor bid should be measured against.

Reading it without an estimator

Focus on three things: the grand total, the line items the carrier included (your required scope), and any depreciation you can recover later. Our full guide walks through reviewing an Xactimate estimate line by line — and BidsScores reconciles each bid against it for you.

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What Is Xactimate? A Property Manager's Plain-English Guide | BidsScores