Glossary

Restoration ops, in plain English

The terms operators run into every week. Written so a new PM or an outside investor can read it once and understand what your shop’s actually doing.

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AR Aging: How long your unpaid invoices have been outstanding, bucketed by 30/60/90/90+ days. Sub-45 days is healthy for restoration; past 60 means a process problem (or a carrier slow-pay) you can usually fix.
Alacrity: One of the major third-party administrator (TPA) programs carriers use to assign restoration claims. Performance is scored on cycle time, customer satisfaction, supplement approval, and a few other categories.
Authority Matrix: A written document defining who at your shop can approve what dollar amount of scope. Tech approves under $X. PM approves under $Y. Owner approves above. Without one, the owner becomes the bottleneck.

Cat 1 / Cat 2 / Cat 3(IICRC water categories): Category 1 is clean water (broken supply line). Category 2 is grey water (washing-machine overflow). Category 3 is contaminated water (sewage backflow). Treatment, PPE, and pricing differ by category.
CompanyCam: Photo-documentation app most restoration shops use in the field. Time-stamped, geo-tagged, organized by job. The agent stack reads from CompanyCam when drafting scopes and supplements.
Contractor Connection: Another major TPA program. Carriers assign claims through it; shops compete on scorecards that measure cycle time, customer satisfaction, and supplement-approval rate.

DASH: Next Gear Solutions' restoration management platform. Job tracking, scheduling, drying logs, customer comms, accounting integration. Common in mid-to-large shops.
Desk Adjuster: The carrier-side claim handler who reviews and approves scopes and supplements. The one your supplement responses are actually trying to convince.
Diagnostic: The 30-day operating audit that opens every R360 engagement. We sit with 90 days of files, walk the shop, talk to the team, and surface dollar-ranked leaks.

Encircle: Field-data and moisture-mapping app. Drying logs, photo capture, sketch tools. Integrates with Xactimate and DASH.
Estimator Assist: The R360 agent that drafts scope-of-loss narratives from CompanyCam photos and the Xactimate sketch. Your estimator becomes the QA and decision-maker, not the typist.

IICRC(Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification): The standards-setting body for restoration. Their S500 (water), S520 (mold), and S540 (trauma) standards are the documentation backbone for almost every supplement narrative.
itel Labs: A material-pricing and content-valuation service carriers use to determine replacement values on contents and finishes. Their methodology can compress payouts in ways operators don't always see coming.

Mitigation (Mit): Phase 1 of a water/fire loss — water extraction, drying, demo, content removal. Distinct from Reconstruction (rebuilding what mitigation removed).

PM(Project Manager): The seat between the owner and the lead tech. Runs files end-to-end. Authority matrix usually empowers them to approve scopes under a defined dollar amount.

Reconstruction (Recon): Phase 2 of a loss — rebuilding what mitigation tore out. Margin is usually higher than mit but cycles take longer and supplements come from a different category of work.

Scope of Loss: The line-by-line write-up of what needs to happen on a file — materials, labor, equipment, days. Submitted to the carrier in Xactimate format. Bad scopes settle low.
Supplement: An add-on scope sent to the carrier after the original estimate, when you discover hidden damage or missed line items. Supplement hit rate (% approved) is one of the cleanest leading indicators of documentation discipline.

TPA(Third-Party Administrator): Carrier-contracted middlemen who assign and score restoration claims. Contractor Connection, Alacrity, Code Blue are the big ones. Joining a program adds volume; staying compliant adds workload.

Xactimate: The pricing-database software almost every carrier and restoration shop writes estimates in. Sketches the structure, prices the line items, exports the scope. Mastering Xactimate macros is one of the highest-leverage skills an estimator has.

Email hello@gorestoration360.com — if a buyer or auditor would need to know it, it belongs here.