The Restoration Industry Association has formally asked Verisk’s Xactware pricing team to add material-handling line items to the Xactimate database. If it happens, one of the most invisible — and most disputed — costs in restoration work finally gets its own line.
The ask
On September 21, 2026, the Restoration Industry Association (RIA) announced it had formally submitted a request to the Verisk Solutions/Xactware Pricing Team calling for the addition of dedicated line items for material handling within the Xactimate pricing database. The news was carried the same week by Cleanfax, Restoration & Remediation magazine, and Cleaning & Restoration magazine.
RIA’s case, in the release’s own words: “Recent pressures on material sourcing have created significant operational and logistical challenges for restoration contractors across the country. Managing material procurement under current market conditions requires substantial additional effort and resource allocation, fundamentally altering the structural business models of many restoration companies.”
The goal is “a standardized, transparent framework for both contractors and adjusters that ensures accurate cost representation and fair compensation.”
“As part of RIA’s commitment to advancing fair, transparent, and timely compensation across the restoration industry, we are taking active steps to represent the operational realities of restoration contractors,” said Saima Hedrick, RIA CEO. “We highly value our ongoing strategic liaison relationship with Verisk and welcome the opportunity to meet with their pricing and data analytics team to provide operational data and restorer input.”
RIA says it will “continue to study material procurement and logistical issues over the coming weeks and months to gather comprehensive feedback on behalf of its contractor members” — in other words, the association is building the data file now, and it wants restorer input in it.
What “material handling” actually means on a job
Strip away the jargon and material handling is everything between buying the material and installing it:
- Sourcing and procurement — finding the material, calling suppliers, placing orders, chasing lead times, reordering when the wrong thing shows up.
- Receiving — unloading the truck, checking quantities against the order, inspecting for damage.
- Staging — carrying materials into the structure, stacking them where they won’t get damaged, moving them out of the way of other trades, then moving them back.
- Delivery logistics — the second and third trips, because the supplier shorted the order or the scope changed mid-job.
None of that installs a single board. All of it costs labor hours, truck time, and warehouse space.
Why this matters: the cost you’re eating
Today there is no standard Xactimate line item for this work, so it gets buried — absorbed into overhead, squeezed into labor minimums, or fought over line by line with an adjuster. That’s the core of RIA’s argument: without a dedicated line item, handling is invisible, and invisible work doesn’t get paid.
Anthony Nelson — a 26-year restoration operator who co-chairs RIA’s AGA Independent Pricing Taskforce — described the general problem bluntly in Cleaning & Restoration: when real costs aren’t represented in the estimate, “these increased costs are simply being absorbed.” His framing: “This is work you are paying for as a cost but not getting paid for as revenue.”
Dedicated line items would give contractors and adjusters a shared, standardized vocabulary for that work — instead of every company inventing its own workaround and every adjuster disputing it.
This isn’t the first round
RIA’s pricing advocacy with Verisk is ongoing, not a one-off. Earlier this year, Verisk added a third tier to Xactimate’s labor efficiency settings — a “Large Restoration/Remodel” tier that, per C&R’s reporting, reduces labor pricing by an estimated 5 to 10% compared with the standard selection. RIA’s AGA Independent Pricing Committee answered with a white paper and what it called “regular discussions with Verisk” on how restorers should handle the change.
C&R’s read on the pattern: pushing Verisk on Xactimate pricing is “a year-over-year occurrence” for RIA’s committees and task forces. The material-handling request is the latest front in that standing campaign.
What Verisk has said
Nothing — at least not publicly. As of September 24, 2026, no public response from Verisk or Xactware to RIA’s request appears on record. RIA’s statement says it “welcomes the opportunity to meet” with Verisk’s pricing and data analytics team, which reads as exactly what it is: the conversation is just starting.
What to do right now: document like the line items already exist
RIA says it will spend the coming weeks and months gathering restorer input. The contractors with the best records will shape whatever Verisk builds — and they’ll get paid in the meantime. Here’s the practical play:
- Log the time. Start a material-handling log for every job: date, who, what they did (pickup, unload, stage, return trip), hours. If it isn’t written down, it didn’t happen.
- Photograph the work. The truck loaded at the supplier. Materials staged on site. The second trip. Photos attached to the estimate beat arguments every time.
- Keep the receipts. Delivery tickets, supplier invoices with timestamps, mileage. A paper trail turns “trust me” into “here’s the record.”
- Write it into the estimate today. Until dedicated line items exist, use custom line items or labor adjustments with clear F9 notes describing the actual handling work and the hours behind it. Backed-up documentation gets paid — Nelson’s experience, cited above, is that supported actual costs rarely get a hard no, even on program work.
- Send pricing feedback straight to Xactware. Verisk’s pricing team takes contractor input at pricing@xactware.com. Use it. Every documented submission is data for the database RIA is trying to change.
- Know the closest existing tool. Verisk’s own Xactimate Time & Materials workflow is built for tracking and reporting actual time and material expenses on complex jobs — the nearest thing in the Xactimate ecosystem to getting paid for real handling costs while the standard price list catches up.
The bottom line
RIA is asking the database to reflect work contractors already do every day. Whether Verisk says yes — and how fast — is an open question. But the contractors who walk in with documented hours, photos, and receipts will be the ones who get paid either way.
Restoration Intel is an operator publication for the restoration trade. Informational only — not legal or coverage advice. When a claim is disputed, the policy language and the documented facts decide it.