A property claim lives or dies on its documentation. Not on how good your argument is — on whether you can support it: the photos, the measurements, the estimate, the policy reading, the paper trail of every carrier exchange, the financial reconciliation at the end. Weak documentation loses winnable claims. Strong documentation settles them faster and at the right number.
What follows is the checklist we’d want on every file, organized by stage. Use it as a reference. Better — keep a version of it live on each claim so you can see, at a glance, what’s done and what’s missing.
At first notice of loss (FNOL)
The opening of a claim sets the foundation. Get this wrong and you spend the rest of the claim catching up.
- Date of loss — pinned down precisely. Many coverage and deadline questions hinge on it.
- Cause of loss — what happened, in plain terms, with enough detail to map it to the policy later (wind vs. hail vs. water vs. fire; sudden vs. ongoing).
- Policy information — carrier, policy number, named insured, effective dates, and a copy of the policy itself (declarations and the base form and the endorsements — not just the dec page).
- Initial photos — even rough ones. The condition of the property at the earliest possible moment is evidence you can’t recreate later.
- Contact log started — every conversation with the insured, the carrier, the carrier’s adjuster, contractors — date, who, what was said, what was agreed. Start it now; backfilling it is painful and unconvincing.
- Loss location and access details — address, who has access, any conditions on entry.
During inspection
The inspection is where most of the evidentiary weight gets created. Be systematic, not selective.
- Scope — a room-by-room, elevation-by-elevation accounting of damage. Not “roof and interior” — the actual scope.
- Measurements — roof dimensions, room dimensions, affected square footage, slopes, lineal footage of trim and gutters. Numbers, not estimates.
- Moisture and damage photos — wide shots for context and tight shots for detail, on every affected area. Moisture readings where relevant, with the meter visible in the photo. Photograph the cause, the path, and the result.
- Sketch or diagram — a drawing of the structure and the affected areas. It anchors everything else and it’s what carriers expect.
- Date and geotag — photos timestamped and, ideally, location-stamped, so there’s no question about when and where they were taken.
- Pre-existing vs. loss-related — note anything that could be argued as pre-existing, and document why the loss-related damage is distinct. Get ahead of the argument.
Building the claim
Now you turn evidence into a claim the carrier can act on.
- Estimate — line-item, in the format the carrier works in, tied to the documented scope. Every line should trace back to something you photographed and measured.
- Comparables / pricing support — backup for any pricing the carrier is likely to push on; documentation of local costs where it matters.
- Supporting documents — contractor reports, engineer reports, lab results, expert opinions, receipts — whatever underpins the claim.
- Policy review — a careful read of the coverage grants, exclusions, sublimits, conditions, and endorsements as they apply to this loss. Know what the policy says before you negotiate it, and know which clauses the carrier will lean on.
- Coverage position — your written view of what’s covered and why, grounded in the policy wording and the facts. This is your work product; build it on the evidence, not on a summary of it.
- Supplements identified — anything discovered after the initial estimate, documented the same way as the original scope.
Carrier communication
This is the stage that quietly determines whether a claim drags or moves — and it’s the one most likely to be under-documented.
- Every email and letter logged — both directions. The carrier’s adjuster’s emails, your responses, the formal letters, the demands. On the claim record, not in someone’s inbox.
- Deadlines tracked — proof of loss deadlines, appraisal demand windows, statutory response periods, any deadline the policy or the law imposes. The clock should be visible and owned, not living in someone’s head.
- Decisions and positions recorded — when the carrier accepts, denies, partially pays, or takes a position, capture it with the date and the document it came in.
- Follow-up cadence — a record of when you followed up and what came of it, so a quiet claim is something you notice rather than something you discover.
- Appraisal / dispute steps — if it goes to appraisal or escalates, every step documented: demand, appraiser selection, umpire, award.
At settlement
The claim isn’t done when the carrier agrees on a number. It’s done when the money is reconciled and the file is closed cleanly.
- Final agreement — the settlement terms, in writing, on the claim.
- Payment reconciliation — what was paid, when, against what — RCV, ACV, recoverable depreciation released, deductible applied, supplements paid. The numbers should reconcile, line by line, against the worksheet.
- Contractor payouts — what was disbursed to contractors, against which work, with documentation.
- Fee calculation — your fee, computed against the agreed basis, documented clearly enough that nobody has to ask how you got there.
- Close-out — final photos if relevant, the complete document set archived, the contact log closed, the claim moved to its closed stage. A file someone could pick up cold and understand.
Keeping the checklist live
The reason most teams have some of this and not all of it isn’t laziness — it’s that a checklist on paper is a checklist nobody looks at. The fix is to make it part of the claim record itself: every claim shows what’s been documented and what’s outstanding, so a missing inspection sketch or an unlogged carrier letter is visible now, not at the point where it costs you.
That’s the model Clatus is built around — the documentation isn’t a separate discipline, it’s the claim file. The photos sync onto the claim, the carrier emails sync onto the claim, the policy and the estimate and the supplements live on the claim, and the financial reconciliation at the end runs against the same record. The checklist stops being something you hope got done and becomes something you can see.
If you want the checklist to run itself on every file, see how Clatus keeps documentation live for restoration contractors and public adjusters.