What is an Xactimate ESX file, and what RoofQuery puts in one

Xactimate, made by Verisk, is the estimating software most North American property insurers and the restoration contractors who work with them use to write and settle claims. An .esx file is Xactimate's estimate file. It carries the sketch, the roof geometry and the line items for a job, and it is how a measurement gets from whoever measured the roof into the estimate an adjuster or contractor is writing.

Why does the ESX matter?

Because a claims user does not want a PDF of measurements. They want the roof already in Xactimate, with facets, pitches and edge lengths in place, so they can price the job without re-drawing anything. A measurement report that does not produce an ESX means someone types every number in by hand, and every retyped number is a supplement waiting to happen.

What does RoofQuery put in the file?

The measured geometry: every roof plane with its pitch and area, and every edge by type. Every completed report can be downloaded as an ESX from GET /api/v1/reports/orders/:id/esx. It is built from the same parse as the XML and the PDF, so the ESX cannot disagree with the report.

Pass a claim number on the order and the technicians put it on the ESX, and the file downloads as <claim>.esx, so it lands under the number the estimator already has open. The claim number is set at order time or not at all.

curl "https://api.roofquery.com/api/v1/reports/orders/rq_ord_8f3a21c9/esx" \
  -o report.esx

# Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="CLAIM12345.esx"

How does it fit an insurance workflow?

1. A claim is opened and your platform orders a report with the claim number on it.
2. About two hours later for residential, the completed webhook fires with the file links.
3. Your platform attaches the ESX to the claim record and the PDF to the file.
4. The adjuster or contractor opens the ESX in Xactimate and starts on line items, not on sketching.

The ESX route needs no API key, so the link can be handed to a field adjuster or a contractor directly. The full workflow is in roof measurements in insurance claims.

How does ESX compare with the other formats?