The tool, in your browser
The depreciation tracker
One row per finished insurance job. Put in the total claim, what the carrier has actually paid you and the homeowner’s deductible, and the page works out the depreciation still held — money you earned that the carrier is sitting on until the work is proven. Add the day you sent the proof package and it counts the days, flags SEND IT when nothing has gone out and CHASE when a job has gone quiet, and totals what’s still out there.
Free, and it asks for nothing. No email, no account, no sign-up. What you type stays in this browser on this device.
Read this first
This list only knows about this browser. Nothing you type is sent to us and nothing syncs, so the phone and the shop computer each keep their own list — and anyone who opens this page on that computer can read your homeowners’ names and what their claims are worth. Clearing your browsing data wipes it, and a new phone won’t bring it along. For the copy that has to last, and for the one the office works from, put the-depreciation-tracker.xlsx on the computer at the shop.
The tracker fills in right here in your browser. If this line stays put, JavaScript is off — the spreadsheet below does the same job.
How it gets used
- Add every completed insurance job in your lookback window — the finished ones, not the live ones. The point is to find the jobs where the work was done and nobody ever sent the paperwork.
- Received so far is carrier money only: the first check as you deposited it, plus any supplements. Do not add the deductible the homeowner paid you — the deductible box already accounts for it, and adding it twice makes the held figure wrong by exactly one deductible. Enter check amounts, not the ACV figure off the paperwork.
- Put the date in the day the proof package goes out. Until then the job reads SEND IT, which is the core miss this sheet exists to catch.
- Set your own follow-up line. Forty-five days is a plain starting point so the page does something out of the box — what counts as “too quiet” on a release is your call.
- Tick Released the day the money lands. The job drops out of the flags and out of the held total.
Where these numbers come from
A supplement raises two boxes, not one
Every time a supplement is approved on the supplement worksheet, raise Total claim (RCV) here by the same amount you add to Received so far. Raise only one and the held figure drops by the size of the supplement, and you go chasing money this page says isn’t there. Type it across yourself. These tools don’t read each other on purpose: on paper you copy a number between two sheets and you can see what you copied, and nothing here quietly changes a figure on a page you aren’t looking at.
The held total belongs in your weekly money meeting, right next to what you’re owed on the money-owed list. One is money a customer owes you; this is money a carrier owes you.
Before you act on it
A tracker, not a reading of your policy
The held figure is deliberately simple — claim minus received minus deductible — so you can eyeball it. It assumes the deductible is the homeowner’s share and that everything else on the claim is either already received or still held. Some policies pay actual cash value only, and on those there is no second check: nothing was held back to release. Check the policy type before you chase, or the job sits in your held total flagging SEND IT forever.
What the carrier needs, and any deadline to claim it, are set by the policy — not by this page. Build your proof package to what your carriers actually ask for, and don’t let a held claim drift, in case there’s a window on it.
One more thing: this play is how we run a shop — it’s not legal advice. Rules change by state and by contract, so before you act on the legal-sounding parts, run them past your own attorney or accountant. It’s your business, and what you do with any of this is your call and your responsibility.
Want it in a spreadsheet?
The same tracker as a spreadsheet
the-depreciation-tracker.xlsx is this tracker as a spreadsheet — same columns, same two flags, same follow-up line — for the computer at the office, where the claim paperwork lives. Four differences in the page’s favour: there’s no row-65 ceiling on what gets counted; the two example jobs are placeholder text here, so there’s nothing to delete before you start; a job counts as still holding the moment you type in it, where the file needs its Released? dropdown set to N first; and a box holding something that isn’t a number or a date says so, where the file would show an error and take the whole row’s math with it. Two the other way: the file is a real file, so it survives a cleared browser and opens on any computer you send it to, and it prints the flags in red for the folder. The sheets ask for your email once; this page never does.
The play behind it — M6-14 The Second Check You Never Went Back For — is how a storm claim pays, and why the second check goes unclaimed, and the sheet notes spell out every column and formula.