Insurance claim glossary — RCV, ACV, depreciation and O&P

A carrier estimate is written in the same handful of words on every job, and almost none of them are explained to the contractor holding it. This page defines the ones Clavoz reads off a document or prints on your paperwork, roughly in the order you meet them. Each entry ends with where the term actually lands in Clavoz, so a definition is never confused with a figure the app did something with.

The carrier's bottom-line ladder

The block at the foot of every carrier estimate, printed by the document itself. Clavoz reads these figures off the page; it does not compute them.

Replacement cost value (RCV)

What the damage costs to rebuild at today's prices, before depreciation comes off. It is the top of the carrier's ladder, and it is not the same thing as your contract price.

In Clavoz: the parsed document summary keeps the carrier's own RCV, and the parser checks its own parsed line items against the document's own Line Item Total — so a mis-read row surfaces as a reconciliation mismatch instead of a quietly wrong total.

Depreciation

The gap between replacement cost and what the property was worth just before the loss: the wear the carrier holds back on the first payment. Depreciation is recoverable when the carrier releases it after the work is done and invoiced, and non-recoverable when it is never paid at all.

In Clavoz: the parsed summary carries the document's depreciation, its total recoverable depreciation and the "net claim if depreciation recovered" figure, and recoverable depreciation is the third of the four payment stages on an insurance quote.

Actual cash value (ACV)

Replacement cost minus depreciation — the depreciated value of the work, and what the carrier pays up front.

In Clavoz: recorded from the document as the parsed summary's ACV. The words themselves never appear on a homeowner's paperwork: "ACV" and "actual cash value" sit on the list of terms the client-facing proposal refuses to print.

Net claim / net estimate

The carrier's bottom line after the deductible. Some carrier software prints "Net Claim" and other estimating systems print "Net Estimate" — Clavoz shows whichever word your document used rather than a generic one.

Deductible

The part of the loss the policyholder owes, in full and directly. A flat deductible is a dollar amount; a percentage deductible is a share of the dwelling limit, printed on the estimate only as the dollar figure it works out to.

In Clavoz: the parser reads the deductible and the dwelling limit off the document and works out which kind it is, and the deductible is the first of the four payment stages — never financed, never discounted. On a Texas job whose contract price reaches $1,000 the client PDF prints the statutory notice, citing Texas Business & Commerce Code Sec. 27.02 and Texas Insurance Code Ch. 707.

Overhead & profit (O&P)

The general contractor's overhead and profit, commonly 10/10 or 15/15 percent, added on top of the trade work. Clavoz derives the implied percentages from the same base the carrier's own estimate uses — the line item total including material sales tax.

In Clavoz: O&P is carrier-side information and never reaches the homeowner. The client proposal refuses the words overhead, profit, markup, margin, O&P and unit cost outright, and the one export that does show O&P is the carrier reconciliation export, which cannot be produced without an explicit confirmation.

The paperwork around the numbers

Line item

One row of the carrier's estimate: a quantity, a unit, a description, a unit price and the value that comes out of them. An estimating system sometimes wraps a single description over several lines, and it prints a code justification as a note against the item rather than as separate work.

In Clavoz: the parser rebuilds rows from the document's own columns and keeps an item's notes with that item, so a wrapped description does not become a phantom second line.

Scope

The work itself — every line item the claim covers, plus whatever you decide to add. The Scope table on a quote is Clavoz's own scope of work, priced from your rate catalog.

Claim number and policy number

The identifiers the carrier prints on the cover sheet. In Clavoz: the parser picks both out of the document and they travel with the quote's insurance fields (see Insurance Claim Fields).

Carrier

The insurance company that issued the estimate — not the homeowner, who is the policyholder it was issued to.

Adjuster

The carrier's representative, and usually the person who wrote the estimate. A public adjuster is hired by the policyholder instead, and an appraisal is the formal dispute route; either one changes who the document came from.

In Clavoz: a document is marked as an appraisal or a public adjuster's estimate only when its own wording says so, and the note Clavoz shows records the phrasing that triggered it. No flag means "not found in this document", never "confirmed absent".

Supplement and reinspection

Work with no carrier line behind it yet, or a second look at damage the first estimate priced too low. In Clavoz: a supplement is the fourth of the four payment stages, priced at your own number, and a document whose text says "supplement estimate" or "reinspection" is flagged as a supplement document.

Price list

The regional price list a document was priced from, printed on the estimate (a state code such as TX). In Clavoz: the index is recorded as part of identifying the document's format.

Ordinance or law

Coverage for work building code forces on you — a full tear-off, a deck rebuild — which the original estimate may not carry. In Clavoz: code-driven work is counted and totalled from the document's own code citations (IRC, IBC, and section numbers such as R905.2 or 1503.x), and an ordinance-or-law mention is flagged separately.

Mortgagee / loss payee

The lender named on the claim, which is why a settlement check sometimes arrives made out to someone who is not the homeowner. In Clavoz: the mention is flagged when it is there; plenty of estimates never name the lender, so a silent document proves nothing either way.

Reading the parser's own words

Clavoz's claim notes are one plain-language line per thing that was actually found, each recording the wording behind it, so a note can be checked rather than taken on faith. The confidence signals and the review flag work the same way: a flag that is absent means "not found in this document", never "confirmed absent".

Where to go next

• Parsing Carrier Estimates — how a carrier PDF becomes priced scope.
• Insurance Claim Fields — carrier, claim, deductible and the four payment stages on the quote.
• Insurance Payment Schedules and Milestone Draws — how the money arrives in pieces.
• System Formula Reference — every figure the app computes.