A PDF estimate is a dead end. Turn it back into an .ESX file.
Upload the Xactimate PDF estimate you were sent (or one of your own) and download a structured .ESX file you can open in Xactimate. Line items, codes, quantities, unit prices, room measurements and coverage totals come across, so instead of retyping someone else's estimate you start editing it. This tool is in development and not yet available in the app.
PDF in. Editable estimate out.
The conversion is one-directional by design: you get a working Xactimate file back, without asking the other side to re-export anything.
Upload the PDF estimate
The printout as you received it: contractor's, carrier's, or your own archived copy. No special export needed from whoever sent it.
We read it line by line
The same extraction engine Estimate Compare and Estimate Review already run in production: every line item with its category and selector code, quantity, unit, unit price, tax, O&P, depreciation and room geometry.
Confirm what was ambiguous
Anything the PDF left unclear is surfaced for you to confirm rather than silently guessed, the same posture as the rest of the platform: every figure traces back to a cell in the source document.
Download the .ESX
Import it into Xactimate and work the estimate normally: re-price it against your own price list, supplement it, or write your response off the real line items.
Structure, not just text.
A PDF-to-ESX conversion is only useful if what lands in Xactimate is a real estimate. Anything that cannot be established from the document is flagged, never invented.
Line items
Description, CAT and SEL codes, quantity, unit of measure, unit price, and line total, in the original sequence, with the source page recorded.
Money structure
Tax, overhead and profit, depreciation and ACV are kept as their own components instead of being collapsed into one total.
Rooms and measurements
Room names with their surface areas, perimeters and ceiling heights, so the sketch side of the estimate is not lost in translation.
Claim header
Insured, loss address, claim and policy numbers, date of loss, price list region and effective date.
The retyping tax nobody bills for.
Estimates get exchanged as PDFs, then rebuilt by hand on the receiving end: hours per file, and every keystroke is a chance to introduce a variance that was never in the original.
Contractors
Open the carrier's estimate as a file, re-price it against your own price list, and write the supplement off their own line numbers.
Carriers & adjusters
Bring a contractor's PDF into your own environment for desk review without a staff member rebuilding it line by line first.
Estimators
Recover an old estimate whose .ESX is long gone but whose PDF is still in the file, and reuse it as the starting point for the next one.
Coming soon, and what that means here.
Estimate ESX is not switched on in the workspace yet, so it is not billed and will not appear in your menu when you sign in. The extraction half already runs in production behind Estimate Compare and Estimate Review. The remaining work is writing a clean, importable .ESX and proving the round trip against a wide range of Xactimate report layouts. We would rather ship it late than hand you a file Xactimate rejects.
Opens an email to support@estology.com. We will reply the day Estimate ESX goes live.
What people ask about Estimate ESX.
Short, direct answers about the PDF-to-ESX round trip, what carries over, and when it ships.
Can you convert a Xactimate PDF estimate to an ESX file?+
Estimate ESX is built for exactly that: you upload the PDF estimate and download an .ESX file to open in Xactimate. The tool is in development and marked coming soon.
Why would I need a PDF converted back to ESX?+
Estimates are usually exchanged as PDFs. A PDF cannot be edited, re-priced, or supplemented in Xactimate, so the receiving side normally retypes it. Converting the PDF into an .ESX file removes that retyping step.
When will Estimate ESX be available?+
It is in active development. Estimate Compare and Estimate Review already read the same PDFs today, so the extraction layer is in production; the .ESX writer is the remaining piece.