Steep-slope roofs punish sloppy estimating — extra labor, harness time, staging, and charges that vanish from scopes because nobody built them into the system. This guide walks through setting up Xactimate templates and macros specifically for steep-slope residential work: what belongs in your base macro, how to layer add-on macros for chimneys and dormers, how to make steep and high charges impossible to forget, and how to organize a library your whole team can run.

Three of the most important components on a residential roof are invisible the day the job is done — and missing from carrier scopes with suspicious regularity. This guide gives roofers the working knowledge for drip edge, starter strip, and ice & water shield: what the IRC actually requires (with section numbers), the installation sequencing that inspectors check, why manufacturer instructions carry code force, and how to document each item so it survives claim review.

Stop hunting through 10,000+ line items every time you write a roof estimate. This cheat sheet covers the 15 Xactimate line item codes that appear on nearly every residential roofing claim — tear-off, shingles, underlayment, flashing, steep charges, and more — plus the units they're measured in, the ones carriers most often leave off, and how to turn this list into estimates that build themselves.