Price an estimate inventory

Price an item

  1. In an estimate, go to the XactContents tab, and click Pricing.
  2. In the Inventory pane, click the item you want to price. The item description automatically loads in the search field.
  3. Adjust the search results as needed.
  4. Choose a replacement item from the vendor items, the combined items, the general quote items , or an external item source.
  5. Double-click the replacement item. The search results of your next item in your inventory list will load automatically.
  6. Repeat until you have priced all items.

Refine the search results

The Refine Results pane is located under the Inventory pane. Use the filters in this pane to refine the results displayed in the Item Description and Search pane.

Refine by department

You can select a department, category, and type for your search. For example, if you search for a King Bed, you will get different results if you search the Linens & Softgoods department than if you search the Furniture – Home & Office department.

Follow the steps below to select a department.

  1. Click All Departments in the Refine Results pane.
  2. Click the relevant department.
  3. If needed, click the relevant category and type.

General quote items automatically have a department, category, and type. When you select a vendor item, a department, category, and type will be assigned.

Refine by attribute and feature

You can narrow the search results by requiring specific features like model number, brand, and vendor. You can also choose to show only active items in the search results. Inactive items are items that were not included in the most recent data received from a merchant partner but may still be available in the marketplace from other retailers. This may be due to the vendor being temporarily out of stock or no longer selling the item. If the vendor later reinstates the item, it will no longer be marked INACTIVE.

When you define a feature, the options available in the next feature are limited, based on your previous selections. This prevents you from defining features for a product that does not exist.

  • To remove the filter on a specific feature, click next to the feature.

Refine by price

To narrow the search results to a price range, do one of the following:

  • Click a preset price range, such as $0.00 – $20.00.
  • Enter a custom price range.

Types of items

With an inventory item selected in the Inventory pane, your search results display the matching Vendor Items, Combined Items, and General Quote Items results based on your item’s description.

Vendor Items

The Vendor Items tab contains items that you can buy from a retailer in Xactware’s merchant partner network. The top 100 results from your search load automatically to save time. This tab also shows discontinued items that link to a suggested item of like kind and quality.

Discontinued Items

When items or model numbers are discontinued by a manufacturer, they remain in the XactContents database. This allows you to search for the insured’s actual item and find the most suitable replacement that is available today for purchase. When an item is discontinued, DISCONTINUED is prepended to the description.

Price a discontinued item
  1. Double-click the discontinued item in your search results window. Your search results will refresh with a list of current like kind and quality replacement options for the discontinued item.
  2. Refine the results as needed. Additional Refine Results features become available including matching the brand and defining specific attributes.
  3. To compare features of the original discontinued item with the features of the possible replacements, complete the following steps:
    1. Select the replacement item. To select multiple items, hold down CTRL.
    2. Click Compare Selected Items or right-click and choose View Features for Selected Item(s). Any upgrade is compared to the original item's features and is displayed with a green up arrow. Any downgrades are displayed with a red down arrow.
    3. If one of the items being compared will work, click Replace.
  4. If you did not compare the features of the items, double-click the selected replacement item. A noted will be added to the line item indicating the original replacement item is discontinued.
Combined Items

The Combined Items list is a combination of the Vendor Items results and the integrated internet search results. It provides a list of the top 15 search results from each search source, including Vendor Items, Nextag, Amazon, Google, and Ebay. It does not include General Quote Items.

General Quote

General quote items are items that fit into a “good”, “better”, or “best” format of pricing similar to structural items. General quote items are updated using aggregate data from the direct merchant feeds and are supplemented with additional research by the Xactware pricing team.

General Quote items are especially helpful when you have very little information about a particular item. For example, if the insured lost a pair of tennis shoes, you could find a generic pair of tennis shoes in the General Quote database.

For more information about Xactware’s pricing methodology, visit the XactContents Pricing Methodology white paper.

External Item Source

External Item Source is an excellent tool for pricing unique or hard to find items. On this tab you can browse the internet and edit line items at the same time. The External Item Source tool automatically documents the site of the line item you are looking at with the date you found the price for that item.

In the External Item Source tab, click the link to the site you prefer. A browser opens within the External Item Source window with the line item description in the Search field. You can also enter any URL into the address bar if the site you need isn’t listed.

Other pricing tools

Provide search feedback

  1. Click Search Feedback to submit feedback regarding the items you are having difficulty with.
  2. Select the appropriate feedback check box(es).
  3. Enter any other comments.
  4. Click Submit.

The feedback goes directly to Xactware’s XactContents team.

Show all matching vendor items

When reviewing the returned Vendor Items search results, there may be items from multiple vendors that have the same model number and brand. You can compare these items side-by-side.

  1. Right-click an item.
  2. Select Show All Matching Vendor Items.
  3. Double-click an item to use it as a replacement.

Verify price

You can verify the price of an item without changing the insured's description or price. When you mark an item as verified, a note with the verified information—description, model number, vendor, price, and date—is attached to the inventory item. To preview the note, hover over the note book in the inventory pane. To open a note and edit it, double-click the note book.

Follow the steps below to mark an item as verified:

  1. Right-click the relevant item in the search results.
  2. Select Verify Price.

View item features

  1. Right-click the vendor item.
  2. Select View Features for Selected Item(s).

Compare features for selected items

  1. Select multiple vendor items.
  2. Right-click the selection.
  3. Click View Features for Selected Item(s) to display the selected items features side-by-side.

When you identify the appropriate item, click Replace above the item’s picture, and the inventory item will be replaced with this item.

View original description

As an item is priced, its original description is retained.

In the Inventory, Pricing, and Interview tabs, to view the original description, hover over the blue triangle at the corner of the current description.

To edit the original description, double-click the blue triangle.

Add a new item to inventory from search results

  1. Right-click the item.
  2. Select Add to Estimate.

Modify item details in the inventory

  1. Select the item in the Inventory pane.
  2. In the Item Description and Search pane, change the details next to the search button. These include the coverage, reported cost, unit price, age, and quantity.

Change search parameters

  1. Click the arrow next to the Search button.

  2. Clear check boxes to narrow your search.
  3. Click Search to redo your search with the new parameters.

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