Having been in the water restoration business since 1992 I have seen a lot of changes through the years in equipment, pricing, methods, third party vendor programs, etc. One of the biggest changes is the amount of documentation that needs to occur on ever water loss. Unfortunately, you can't charge for it but it needs to happen to protect you if that ever is a problem on a job. Let's look at what it takes paperwork wise to document a claim properly.
First there's the photos. To do it properly, you will need some photos of the outside of the loss, photos of each room affected from the loss, closeup photos of damaged items, photos showing wet structure items with your moisture meter in the photo, photos of your temperature and humidity meter inside, outside, and in front of your dehumidifiers, more photos of all of your equipment set up within the loss, then as walls become dry you will need photos of your meter on the wall showing it is dry. All these photos need to have a date and time stamp. Then when you load these into the invoice you will need to label each photo so that others looking at it will know what it is.
Then there is the forms. You will need a signed Work Authorization from the insured before beginning to work, a daily humidity reading log sheet, a Certificate of Satisfaction signed by the insured when work is completed and a dehumidifier calculation chart to justify why you used the amount of dehumidifiers you did, plus any others that would be pertinent to the claim. Then all these documents have to be scanned into the computer and uploaded to the claim with a detailed description of what each one is.
Next you will need to sketch out the loss. You will need either a hand drawn sketch or do your sketch in one of the many industry software programs that are available. The sketch should show doors, windows, measurements, names of rooms, and origin of loss.
Then there is the notes. If you are doing the paperwork part correctly then you will accumulate lots of notes. These notes will help all the "inside" adjusters that look at your claim file understand why you did certain things, who approved it, etc. The notes will also help them know what is going on with the claim from day to day. These notes should be done daily at minimum and should include when there is contact with the insured, insurance company, or any other interested party. A fully documented claim file, full of notes can really help an adjuster justify your restoration charges, and fully tell the story of what happened to the people that look at the claim only on paper. Notes are vital to a properly documented claim file.
We can now finally get to the invoice. Not only should your invoice contain your charges for the job broken down by room, but it should also have notes after any questionable line item. Say we have a loss in a home where the master bedroom, hall, hall bath, and another bedroom are affected. Then each one of these rooms will need to have the drying equipment that was set in the room during the job, any water extraction, baseboard removal, content manipulation, or whatever else was done in that room. You will need to have notes explaining certain line items. Such as why you charged to haul off a full load of trash or give details as to how you charged for equipment monitoring per day, etc.
The more complete the claim file is the fewer complaints you will have about your invoice and the quicker you will get paid.
http://www.prodrying.com/ or http://www.pearsoncarpetcare.com
Here's the same thing just published on yahoo contributor network. http://voices.yahoo.com/how-paid-faster-insurance-companies-10630047.html?cat=17
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