In September, RIA formally asked Verisk for a dedicated material-handling line item in Xactimate. We covered the ask when it was made. The answer landed on schedule: according to RIA’s announcement, Verisk’s November 1, 2026 price lists for the United States and Canada include the new item.
One honesty note up front: this is RIA’s announcement as reported by the trade press. I haven’t read Verisk’s November list or the item’s published definition directly, and the announcement doesn’t name a line-item code. You’ll find the item in your updated list — and the definition sitting next to it is the document that governs everything below.
Why this item exists
Third-party material pricing and sourcing programs can save real money on the product. What they don’t price is the work of getting the product.
RIA’s examples are the ones every operator recognizes. The cheaper supplier is 20 minutes farther away — that’s travel time, vehicle expense, and a tech off the job. A purchasing requirement moves ordering, pickup, and delivery off a subcontractor and onto your crew. Somebody on your payroll verifies specifications, chases availability, receives and unloads the truck, and sorts out the shortage or the wrong order when it shows up.
A lower material price does not necessarily mean a lower total cost to complete the repair. Until now, the estimate had no clean place to say so. Now it does.
How the item works
Per RIA’s announcement:
- The item initially appears with a $0 “Each” unit. There is no preset price. You enter a flat dollar amount.
- The amount is job-specific, for the activities covered by the item’s published definition. Read the definition in your price list before you use the item — it governs the intended use.
- Supporting documentation should explain the additional work and the associated costs — and the amount must not duplicate costs already included elsewhere in the estimate.
- It is not a preset reimbursement rate. There is no standard number to lean on, and treating it like one is how it gets struck.
Building an amount that survives review
This part is operator practice, not Verisk rule — but it’s the difference between the item paying and the item getting kicked back.
Price the work the way the announcement describes it: the extra trip and the miles on it, the time ordering and coordinating, the hands receiving and unloading, the return trip for the wrong order. If a purchasing program moved a task from a sub to your crew, say that in the documentation — that’s the exact shift this item was created for.
Then check the rest of your estimate before you submit. If the trip is already in a delivery charge, or the labor is already sitting in another line, pull it out of one place or the other. The announcement’s no-duplication rule is the first thing a reviewer will test, and it’s the easiest test to pass if you run it yourself first. Our rundown of which Xactimate line items adjusters actually approve makes the same point from the other side: documented and non-duplicative is what gets paid.
What it is not
RIA was careful about this, and estimators should be too. Requesting the item is not an endorsement of any third-party pricing or procurement program, and the item doesn’t settle the bigger arguments — price availability, payment terms, who owns fulfillment, and the rest of the additional costs a directed purchasing program can push onto a contractor. Those fights continue. RIA says it will keep gathering contractor input, and the October price-list movement we covered last month suggests the list is still very much in motion.
RIA’s CEO, Saima Hedrick, put the principle plainly: “Cheaper materials can offer real savings, but those savings need to be evaluated alongside the work required to obtain them. If a contractor must drive farther, manage purchasing or take over material handling previously performed by a subcontractor, that work still has a cost.”
The September request asked for a place to put that cost. The November lists have it. Use it where the definition fits, document the work like someone will audit it — because someone will — and don’t pad it into a rate it was never designed to be. An item that gets abused gets narrowed, and this one took a formal industry ask to get.
This piece follows our earlier coverage of RIA’s request for dedicated material-handling line items and Verisk’s October price lists. Source: RIA announcement via Restoration & Remediation Magazine, October 2026.