Spreadsheet vs claims CRM
Most claims offices run on a spreadsheet, and for the first stretch that is the right call — it is free, it is instant, and it bends to whatever you thought of this morning. This page is about the point where it stops: not because a grid is primitive, but because a claim is a file with a history, several people and money in it, and a cell holds one value with nobody’s name on it.
First, in fairness
A spreadsheet is the fastest modelling tool most offices will ever have. You can invent a column at ten in the morning and have it filled in by eleven, without asking anyone. You can work out what a settlement nets after fees in three cells, try it four different ways, and throw the whole thing away. No software should pretend that is a weakness.
It also has no seat cost, no setup and no learning curve worth the name. If you are one person carrying six claims, a sheet is not a compromise — it is the correct tool, and our own pricing page describes the entry plan as being for operators getting their first claims off spreadsheets, not for people who never used one.
What follows is the list of things a grid cannot do, whatever discipline you apply to it. Each one is a structural limit, not a habit you could fix by being tidier.
The limits
Six jobs an office does every week, and what each one costs in a sheet against what it costs on a claim record.
| What you need | In a spreadsheet | In CRM For Claims |
|---|---|---|
| Know who changed a figure, and when | The cell is overwritten. Cloud sheets keep a version history, but you read it as a list of edits to a file, not as the story of one claim — and a copy someone downloaded has no history at all. | Every change is a dated row on that claim's Records screen, stamped to the minute with the name of the person who made it. |
| Pull up every claim sitting in one stage | A filter you reapply, on a status column somebody has to keep spelling the same way. "Approved", "approved" and "Aprroved" are three stages. | Stages are a list your office writes once. The projects list carries a checkbox for each one, so the stage cannot be misspelt into a fourth. |
| Keep one person out of one column | Access is per file. Whoever can open the sheet can read all of it, including the money columns. | Three access levels, plus 367 individual screen permissions on each person's record. Document folders and stages are granted by level. |
| Put the adjuster's report on the claim | A filename typed into a cell, or a link to a shared folder that someone reorganised in March. | The file is uploaded onto the claim into a named folder, and the upload is logged with the folder name and the person who did it. |
| Make something happen when a claim moves | Nothing happens. A person has to notice the row changed, and remember what that means. | A stage can create a task the moment a claim enters it, landing on the person holding a named role on that claim. |
| Let two people work at the same time | Shared editing, or a copy each. Copies drift, and the one on somebody's laptop is the one they trust. | One record. The claim is the same object for everyone who opens it, and the Records screen shows who touched it last. |
The one that decides it for most offices is the first row. A claim that goes to appraisal, or to a lawyer, or simply to an argument about what the carrier was told in June, is a claim where somebody has to reconstruct a sequence of events. A sheet cannot help with that, because the version of it you are looking at is the only version it has.
History
Each claim has a Records screen: one timeline of everything that happened to it, assembled from the parts of the system that were already writing it down. Entries are grouped into eight categories — among them Stages, Tasks, Files, Project Changes and Finance — and you can filter the timeline down to one category, or to one person, and page through it.
What each kind of entry actually says:
Every row is stamped with a date and time to the minute and the name of the person responsible, or System where the action was automatic. That attribution is the whole difference. In a sheet, the answer to “who put that number there” is usually a memory; here it is a row.
Finding things
A spreadsheet answers one question at a time, and you pay for the next question by re-sorting.
The claims list is filtered rather than sorted, and the filters are permanent parts of the screen:
| Filter | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Active, or every stage on its own | Active is the default view. Beyond it, every stage your office defined is its own checkbox, so "everything waiting on the carrier" is a tick rather than a re-sort. |
| Projects With Active Tasks For Me | The claims where something is assigned to the person looking at the screen and is not finished. It is the closest thing to a to-do list that still points at the claim. |
| Show user's projects | Narrows the list to one person's claims, chosen from your team, for the Monday morning question of what an adjuster is actually carrying. |
| Show only those who require attention | The claims flagged as needing a look. A spreadsheet version of this is a colour somebody has to remember to clear. |
| Date range, including a custom one | Preset ranges plus a start and end date you type, so "opened in the last quarter" does not need a helper column. |
| Favourites, and a search box | Starred claims kept to hand, and free-text search across the list for the one where you remember the street but not the name. |
The filters combine, and the result can be printed straight from the screen with a Print Selected Filter button — which is how the list gets into a meeting without anyone copying rows into a new sheet. How the same claims are counted for reporting, and which date each report counts a claim on, is set out under reporting and KPIs.
Access
Sharing a file grants the whole file. Hiding a column hides it from the eye, not from the person — they can unhide it, and a downloaded copy carries everything. The usual workaround is a second sheet with fewer columns, which immediately becomes a second set of numbers to keep in step with the first.
There are three access levels, and beneath them 367 individual screen permissions on each person’s own record, so a field adjuster and a bookkeeper open the same claim and see different parts of it. Document folders and stages are granted by level. The detail is on roles and permissions.
This matters most at the point a sheet usually breaks: the third or fourth person. One person needs no permissions. Two people can shout across a room. At four, somebody is editing a copy, somebody is reading a column they should not be, and the sheet has quietly become the least trustworthy document in the office.
Price
Essentials is $59 a month for the company account and the first admin user, with each additional user at $39 a month. It covers claim pipelines and tasks, customer and project records, document storage on projects and team permissions — which is to say, everything on this page except the automation. Stage automation, e-signatures, the Documents Hub, invoicing and online payments are part of Professional at $99 a month. Teams of fifteen or more users are priced as Enterprise. The full comparison is on the pricing page.
Against that, a spreadsheet costs nothing per month and an unknown amount per year in the claim nobody followed up on. We are not going to put a number on that, because we do not have yours.
Honest limits
If you are weighing this against a general contractor platform rather than against a sheet, the comparison page says plainly when the broader tool is the better fit. If you want to see how the claim itself is structured first, start with the claims pipeline.
FAQ
Straight answers about who we serve, what we automate, and how to get started.
The usual breaking point is the third or fourth person on the same file. One person needs no permissions and no audit trail; four people produce copies that drift, columns that should not be shared, and no way to answer who changed a figure. If you can still answer that question from memory, the sheet is probably fine.
Yes. Each claim has a Records screen holding a timeline of everything that happened to it, in eight categories including stages, tasks, files, project changes and finance. Every row carries a date and time to the minute and the name of the person responsible, or System where the action was automatic. You can filter it to one category or one person.
No. There is no export of the claims list to a spreadsheet file. You can filter the list on screen and print the filtered result. If a downloadable grid is central to how you work, you should know that before moving.
Yes. Spreadsheet files are accepted as uploads on a claim like any other document, so an existing sheet can be filed against the job it belongs to. It stays a file, though — the rows in it are not read into the system as claim data.
No. There is no estimating tool. The estimate is written in Xactimate or by your estimator and uploaded to the claim, and its totals, depreciation and deductibles are recorded as fields that the invoices are raised from.
Yes, and this is the clearest thing a shared file cannot do. There are three access levels plus 367 individual screen permissions on each person's record, and document folders and stages are granted by level, so two people can open the same claim and see different parts of it.
Essentials is $59 a month including the company account and first admin user, with each additional user at $39 a month. Stage automation, e-signatures, the Documents Hub and invoicing need Professional at $99 a month. Teams of fifteen or more users are priced as Enterprise. A spreadsheet has no monthly cost, which is a fair argument for a solo operator and a weak one for a team of five.
