What an ESX file actually is, and why nothing writes you one
Every measuring app gets asked for an ESX export. The reason so few have one is not laziness, and knowing what the reason is tells you what to ask for instead.
What the file is
ESX is Xactimate’s own format for moving an estimate between machines and between people. Underneath it is a compressed archive — a zip — holding the estimate’s structured data, which on a claim includes the sketch: the rooms, their dimensions and how they connect.
That last part is why anybody who has already measured a building with something else wants one. If the geometry can go in as data, nobody re-draws a room they already walked.
Why an app you use cannot simply write one
Being a zip is not the same as being open. What is inside the zip is Verisk’s own schema, and that is where a "just export an ESX" feature request stops.
Trueline’s own source records the position it took, in the file that builds the job archive, and the sentence it prints inside every archive it makes is this:
This is not an .esx and Xactimate will not open it. ESX is Verisk’s own format; its schema is not published, and every tool that writes one has a partnership with Verisk to do it. Everything an ESX would carry is in here in formats anything can read — the drawing as DXF, the quantities as CSV, the claim as PDF and HTML, the photographs as they were taken.
The reason that sentence exists at all is the failure it prevents: a file that quietly is not an ESX is a file somebody emails to an adjuster expecting Xactimate to open it. Writing a speculative one and calling it an export would ship a file nobody can verify opens, which is worse than not having the button.
What has not been verified here, said plainly. Nobody at Trueline has been shown a schema document by Verisk, and "there is no public schema" is a negative that cannot be proved from outside. What can be seen from outside is that tools which do write ESX describe the arrangement as a partnership — Roofr’s own page for it is titled "ESX Files for Xactimate | Roofr + Verisk Partnership", and magicplan publishes an Xactimate integration of its own. Both of those are search results seen rather than pages read, and neither says anything about what Verisk’s terms are. Treat the paragraph above as the reason a small app gives you for not having the feature, not as a statement of anybody’s licensing.
What an ESX has no field for
This is the part worth sitting with, and it is true of every estimating format rather than a criticism of this one. There is nowhere in an estimate file to record that a wall was scanned and never checked.
Once geometry is inside an estimating package it is indistinguishable from geometry somebody put a tape on, and every quantity derived from it inherits that. The room that was guessed at and the room that was measured produce identically confident numbers, on identically professional paper.
So the discipline has to happen before the export, not after it. Settle which walls have had a tape on them, correct the ones that matter, and then send. After that, the information is simply gone.
What to send instead, and why it is not a downgrade
Everything an ESX would carry exists in formats that need nobody’s permission. A job archive is one file to attach rather than an email with six things on it and a seventh forgotten:
| What it is | The format | What opens it |
|---|---|---|
| The drawing | DXF | Every CAD package, and most estimating ones |
| The quantities | CSV | A spreadsheet, or an estimating package’s importer |
| The claim document | PDF and HTML | Anything at all |
| The photographs | As they were taken | Anything at all |
| What the archive holds, and what is missing from it | A manifest | A text editor — it is the list of the other five |
The manifest is the part that is not obvious and is the part that matters. It repeats the provenance caveat at a level above any single file in the archive — because somebody opens the CSV in a spreadsheet, prices off it, and never looks at the drawing the caveat was printed on. A caveat that travels with one file and not the others is a caveat somebody works around without meaning to.
It also carries, in writing, that the archive is not an ESX. Said out loud, in the file, because somebody will ask.
What to check on anything that did import
Room names
They travel, and they are frequently whatever the capturing app called them. "Room 3" is not a room name an adjuster can work with.
Ceiling heights, on every room
The single value most likely to be a default rather than a measurement. Check all of them, not the first one.
The opening count, against the actual room
A missed door is a deduction that never happens, on every quantity derived from that wall.
Anything the capture had to guess at
Bays, curves, deep bulkheads. These are where an automated capture produces a clean, confident, wrong shape.
Whether any of it was ever measured
Nothing in the file can tell you, so it has to come from you, and it has to be settled before the file leaves rather than after.
Questions people ask
- What is an ESX file?
- It is Xactimate’s own format for moving an estimate between machines and people. Underneath it is a compressed archive holding the estimate’s structured data, including the sketch — the rooms, their dimensions and how they connect.
- Can any app export an ESX?
- The tools that write one describe having an arrangement with Verisk to do it. That is the reason an app you use may tell you it cannot: writing a speculative file and calling it an export would produce something nobody can verify Xactimate will open, which is worse than not offering it.
- Does an ESX record whether a wall was measured with a tape?
- No. There is no field for it. Once geometry is inside an estimating package it looks exactly like geometry somebody measured, which is why the decision about what is trustworthy has to be made before the file is sent.
- What should I send an adjuster if I cannot send an ESX?
- The drawing as DXF, the quantities as CSV, the claim as PDF, the photographs as they were taken, and a manifest listing all of it. Every one of those opens without anybody’s software, and the manifest is where the caveat about what was and was not measured lives so that it cannot be lost by opening one file out of five.
Where this fits with Trueline
Trueline is an iPhone app that measures a room, takes it off, prices it from your own rate book and turns it into a proposal — with every length carrying whether it was scanned, drawn or measured, right onto the document a client reads. See how it works, or take the free templates and use them with whatever you already have.