What Export Templates Are For
ContentsPal already ships layouts for the common carriers — XactContents, State Farm, USAA, Farmers, Homesite and others — and those are available to everyone. But most restoration companies work with at least one carrier, TPA or franchise that has its own inventory spreadsheet, and until now that meant exporting a standard file and retyping the contents into theirs.
An export template is that spreadsheet, uploaded once by an owner or admin. We read its layout, work out what belongs in each column, and from then on anyone in your organization can pick it when they generate a report. The file that comes out is the carrier's own form, with your job's items filled in and the form's own formulas and formatting intact.
Templates you add are private to your organization. Nobody outside it sees them.
You'll need: an owner or admin account, and the carrier's blank spreadsheet (XLS or XLSX, up to 10 MB). Use an empty copy of the form, not one that already has a job's items in it.
Adding a Template
Click Organization in the side menu, then open the Settings tab.
Select Reporting in the left sidebar, then the Export Templates tab.
Click Upload Template.
Choose the carrier's blank spreadsheet and give the template a name. The name is what your team will see in the report dropdown, so name it after the carrier or the form — "Custom Total loss spreadsheet", not "final-v3.xlsx".
Click Continue. We read the sheet and propose a mapping — this takes a few seconds.
Check the mapping (see below), then click Save template.
Checking the Mapping
This is the step that matters. The proposed mapping is a good starting point, not a finished answer — look at it before you save.
Columns
Each column found in the spreadsheet is listed with its heading from the form, next to a dropdown of what ContentsPal will put there. An Example column shows a sample value where the form has one — most blank forms don’t, so it is often empty.
Change anything that looks wrong. The heading in the form is often ambiguous — a column called "Brand/Color Description" could reasonably be either.
Leave a column blank if we have no good match. A blank column is much better than a column filled with the wrong thing. Adjuster-only fields, the carrier's internal codes and free-text remarks usually have no equivalent on our side.
Columns the form calculates itself are locked and marked "Calculated by the form". Line totals, depreciation and lookups are the spreadsheet's own formulas; filling them in would break the sheet, so we leave them alone.
Pay closest attention to price columns. If the form has a single price column, it should be set to Price (per each, submitted or replacement) so it uses the price ContentsPal produced. Insured / submitted price is the policyholder's own figure, which is only filled in when a policyholder inventory has been imported — on most jobs it's empty, so a price column set to it will export blank.
Sheet and first item row
Above the table you'll find which sheet the items go on and which row they start at. We pick these from the form's layout; change them if the form has several sheets, or if the items should start lower down.
Job information cells
If the form has a header block — the insured's name, the claim number, the adjuster — those cells are listed with the label printed beside them in the form, and a dropdown for which detail from the job goes there. Set each one, or leave it blank.
If the form has no header block at all, this section will say so. That's normal; plenty of forms are just a list of items.
Use Add cell if the form has a field we missed. Type its cell address, for example C3.
Re-run AI
If the whole proposal is well off — usually a sign the wrong sheet was picked — change the sheet and the mapping is redone for it. Re-run AI tries again on the current sheet.
Using a Template on a Report
Once saved, the template is available to everyone in your organization.
Open the job and click the Reports tab.
Click Generate Report, then choose Total Loss Carrier Spreadsheet (or Standard Format Spreadsheet under Additional Reports).
In Output Format, your templates appear at the top under Organization Templates, above the built-in Carrier Templates.
Adjust the other options if you need to, then click Generate.
The file you get back is the carrier's spreadsheet with your items in it.
Managing Templates
Each template card shows the file it came from, the sheet it fills, which fields it maps, how many columns are mapped, and when it was last updated. An AI mapping badge means nobody has corrected the proposal yet — it disappears once you edit and save.
Edit mapping reopens the review screen. Use it whenever a column turns out to be filled with the wrong thing — you don't need to re-upload the file.
Archive, under the … menu, takes a template out of the report dropdown but keeps it in the list, under the Archived tab. Use it for a carrier you've stopped working with. Restore brings it back.
Delete, also under …, removes the template and the uploaded spreadsheet permanently. Reports you already generated with it are unaffected.
Good to Know
Empty values are left blank
Items that never had a brand, serial number or model recorded export as an empty cell. Placeholder text an item may have picked up along the way — "Unknown", "N/A", "None", "-" — is treated as empty too, so it isn't printed into a carrier's form.
Multi-page printable forms aren't supported
Some carriers use a printable form that repeats the same page across many sheets, twenty items to a page. Those are refused at upload with a message. Contact support and we'll set one up for you.
The columns are the carrier's, not yours
You choose what goes into each column, but you can't add or remove columns — the layout has to stay exactly as the carrier expects it, or their system won't accept the import. If you want to design your own columns, use the Custom Inventory Report instead.
Who can do what
Only owners and admins can add, edit, archive or delete templates. Everyone else in the organization can use them on reports.
Troubleshooting
A column comes out empty
Open Edit mapping and check what that column is set to. The usual cause is a price column set to the insured's submitted price, which is empty on most jobs — switch it to the combined price field. The other cause is a field your items genuinely don't have filled in.
The wrong information is in a column
Edit mapping, change the dropdown for that column, and save. The next report picks up the change; reports already generated aren't altered.
My template isn't in the dropdown
Check it isn't archived, and that you're on a job belonging to the organization the template was added to. Templates don't cross organizations.
The mapping missed most of the columns
Usually the wrong sheet. Change the Sheet dropdown on the review screen and the mapping is redone for that sheet.
Related Articles
Standard Format Spreadsheet — the report these templates plug into, and its other options
Customizing Reports for Your Organization — setting default report options for your team
Custom Inventory Report — when you want to choose your own columns