Contents Claim QA Checklist

A schedule can look finished and still carry the same mistake four hundred times. This is the pass to make before it leaves your hands, grouped by what you are actually looking at.

Kevin Godfrey, KevinLast updated 5 October 2026

What should be checked before a contents schedule is submitted?

That every line identifies its item, supports its quantity, prices from something genuinely comparable with the source attached, classifies and depreciates consistently, and reconciles from the row to the total.

The test for any single line is one question: could another adjuster tell what the item was, what replaces it, where the price came from and how the ACV was reached? Everything below is a way of failing that question earlier than a desk reviewer would.

1 · The item

Identity, quantity and the evidence behind them
Check	What you are looking for
Description	Specific enough to price — and not more specific than the evidence supports
Make and model	Present where a plate, badge, barcode or receipt establishes them
Variant	Size, capacity, generation and finish, where they move the price
Quantity	One item, several identical items, or a set — and the line says which
Photo support	Several frames of one item became one line, not several
Duplicates	The same property is not claimed twice, across rooms or batches

In Kevin a photograph already on the claim resolves as a duplicate rather than arriving twice, and related frames are proposed as one item for you to confirm before anything becomes a line. The effect to check for is simple: the item count never exceeds the photograph count.

2 · The price

Where most of the argument lives
Check	What fails it
Comparability	A replacement matched on one characteristic and not the rest
Bundles and sets	A multi-pack pricing a single item, or the reverse
Form factor	Cordless priced as corded, freestanding as built-in, sectional as sofa
Duplicate listings	One product from nine sellers treated as nine comparables
The right market	Resale used where retail exists, or retail forced on a discontinued item
Outliers	A clearance or liquidation price standing in for replacement cost
The source itself	A link that no longer shows the product the line describes

3 · The arithmetic

Reproduce one line by hand; the rest follow the same shape
Check	What it should do
Content class	Consistent with similar items elsewhere in the schedule
Age	How long the insured owned it, not the model year
Identical ages	A whole category at exactly one year old is worth a second look
Depreciation	Follows from class and age, the same way on every row
RCV	Unit cost × quantity, plus tax
ACV	RCV less depreciation — applied to the tax-inclusive figure
Totals	The schedule reconciles from the rows to the final number

Depreciation in Kevin is computed server-side from the class and the age, so the worksheet and the export cannot disagree and line 400 is treated like line 4. What is worth checking is the inputs: a wrong class or a wrong age produces a perfectly consistent wrong answer.

4 · The exceptions

This is where review time actually belongs. The lines worth slowing down on are the ones where a small error is expensive or hard to walk back:

High-value property — model, variant, configuration and condition.
Collectibles — edition, condition, packaging, completeness, and which market.
Discontinued items — whether the replacement path makes sense and is visible.
Clothing and footwear — premium labels preserved rather than averaged into a group.
Thin pricing — anything priced from very little, or not priced at all.
Outliers — a price a long way from its neighbours with nothing on the row explaining it.

Appraisal classes reach you unpriced by design — jewelry, firearms, fine arts, furs, fine china and graded trading cards — so they are on this list whether or not you put them there.

5 · The file

Before the export leaves
Check	Why
Line numbers	Stable — an export already sent cites them, so they are never renumbered
Room and location	Correct, and the same property is not sitting in two rooms
Incomplete lines	Listed as exceptions rather than quietly filled in
The right claim	Right claim, right insured, right format
Format	Xactimate (Excel) .xlsx in the XactContents template, or the PDF

Kevin never blocks an export on any of this. The dialog tells you what needs attention and the download stays live, because whether to send it is your call rather than the software’s.

The one-line test

If you only do one pass, do this one: pick ten lines at random and ask whether a stranger could follow each from the item to the ACV without asking you a question. The schedule is as strong as the weakest line somebody happens to open.

Common questions

What is a contents claim QA review?

A pass over the finished schedule before it leaves your hands, checking that each line identifies its item, supports its quantity, prices from something comparable, depreciates consistently and reconciles arithmetically. It is cheaper than answering the same questions one at a time after a desk review.

Should every line be checked to the same depth?

No, and a schedule of several hundred lines makes that impossible anyway. Routine property can be scanned; high-value, unusual, discontinued and collectible lines are where a few minutes each is worth spending, because that is where an error is expensive.

What are the most common contents inventory mistakes?

Vague descriptions, duplicated items, replacements that are not really comparable, prices with no source, depreciation applied inconsistently, and quantity errors. Most of them scale with the size of the claim rather than appearing once.

Does Kevin check any of this automatically?

Some of it is prevented rather than checked: a photograph already on the claim resolves as a duplicate, related frames are proposed as one item before anything becomes a line, depreciation is computed server-side from class and age so it cannot drift between rows, and a line Kevin cannot price arrives blank rather than guessed. The judgment calls are still yours.

How do I check the arithmetic quickly?

Take one line and reproduce it by hand: unit cost × quantity, plus tax, less depreciation, equals ACV. Depreciation applies to the tax-inclusive figure, so a line that foots any other way is worth understanding before the whole schedule inherits it.

What should I do about lines that are still incomplete?

Leave them visible rather than filling them in. An explicit exception list — missing age, missing model, needs a better photograph, needs a source — is far easier to defend than a schedule that looks complete because the gaps were papered over.

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