Property Damage Report
An insurance-grade record of damage to a building and its contents, written so the claim does not turn on what somebody remembers three weeks later.
- The time it happened and the time it was found, kept apart
- Twelve mitigation actions, which is what protects the claim
- Every damaged item aged, because age decides the settlement
- Loss of rent carried as its own figure, not folded in
Property Damage Report
What happened, and what it costs
| # | Mitigation action | Done | By | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Photographs and video before anything was moved | |||
| 2 | Water supply isolated at the stopcock or valve | |||
| 3 | Damaged items retained, not thrown away |
The document you will get. Download for the full, editable file.
Who this property damage report is for
Four people read this document, and only one of them saw the damage.
Whoever found it
You are filling in Part A while the water is still on the floor. The photographs-before-anything-moved line is the one that cannot be done later, and it is the first mitigation action for that reason.
Property or facilities manager
You own the claim. The damage schedule with ages, the areas out of use and the quotes are the three sections that decide what you actually recover.
Landlord, owner or managing agent
You need the loss of rent figure and the uninsured cost. Both are on the claim summary, and both are the lines most often left blank.
Insurer or loss adjuster
You are testing the claim. Mitigation actions with times against them, the evidence register and the age of each item are what move a claim from asserted to evidenced.
Which section matters the most in your sector
The report is the same shape everywhere. What changes is the section that decides the settlement, and it is usually the one your policy is strictest about. If you run one of these, the sector page goes further than the template does.
- Commercial real estate
Areas out of use. Across a let portfolio the loss of rent is frequently larger than the physical damage, and it is a separate part of the policy.
Portfolio maintenance software - Retail and malls
Business interruption. A closed trading floor costs more per day than the ceiling that caused it, and the areas-out-of-use table is where that is captured.
Retail maintenance software - Healthcare
Whether a maintenance failure caused it. In a clinical setting that question is asked by more parties than your insurer.
Healthcare maintenance software - Education
Evidence held. Damage found on a Monday after a weekend closure is the case where CCTV and the discovery time carry the whole claim.
Campus maintenance software - FM service providers
Immediate mitigation. When you manage the building for somebody else, the mitigation log is what shows you acted rather than waited for instructions.
FM service provider software - Corporate facilities
Contents and equipment. Desks, IT and fit-out are what get damaged in an office, and the asset register entry is what values them.
Corporate facilities software
What a property damage report should contain
A property damage report is an insurance-grade record of damage to a building and its contents. It captures when the damage happened and when it was found, the peril that caused it, the steps taken to stop it getting worse, the evidence held, a schedule of what was damaged, and the claim after the excess.
A. Fields specific to a property damage report
| Field | What goes in it | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Occurred and discovered | Two separate dates and times | The gap between them is the first thing an insurer looks at, because damage left running for a weekend is damage made worse by delay. |
| Peril | Storm, flood, escape of water, fire, impact, vandalism, subsidence, freeze and seven more | The peril decides which part of the policy responds and whether it responds at all. Naming it precisely matters more than describing it well. |
| Was the cause a maintenance failure | Yes, no, or under investigation, with an explanation | The most uncomfortable field on the form and the one that decides recovery, betterment and sometimes whether the claim is paid. |
| Immediate mitigation | Twelve actions, each with who did it and when | Insurers can reduce or refuse a claim where reasonable steps were not taken to prevent further damage. This section is the evidence they were. |
| Evidence held | Photographs, CCTV, invoices, service history, weather, witnesses | CCTV overwrites itself, usually within thirty days. Securing a copy today is a different act from requesting it after the claim is queried. |
| Damage schedule with age | Item, location, damage, age, repair or replace, cost | Age is what determines new-for-old against a deduction for wear. It is easy to record on the day and nearly impossible to establish later. |
| Areas out of use | Area, normal use, out from, expected back, rent or revenue affected | This is the business interruption or loss of rent figure. It is a separate part of most policies and it is the line most often missing. |
| Repair quotes | Contractor, scope, quote, lead time, and which was selected | Get the quotes before agreeing a settlement figure. A settlement based on an estimate rarely gets revisited upwards. |
| Claim summary | Total loss, excess, net claim, betterment, third party recovery, uninsured cost | The arithmetic that turns a description into a number. The spreadsheet adds the damage, the rent and the mitigation costs and nets off the excess. |
| Insurer and third party | Policy, claim reference, adjuster, and who else is liable | Most policies require notification within days rather than weeks, so the date reported to the insurer is a field with a deadline attached. |
| Anyone injured | Yes or no, with a separate incident report required | A damage report is about the building. The moment a person is hurt it becomes two documents, and only one of them is this one. |
If you cut the report down, keep the mitigation log and the age column. Everything else can be reconstructed from invoices, photographs and memory. Whether you isolated the water within the hour, and how old the ceiling was, cannot: the first is a set of actions with times that only exist if somebody wrote them down as they happened, and the second is a fact that quietly resolves in the insurer's favour once nobody can prove it.
B. What it looks like filled in
The claim summary for one escape of water: a failed pipe above a level two office, discovered the same day. The spreadsheet adds the first three lines and nets off the excess.
| Line | Figure | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Total estimated damage | 840.00 | Sum of the damage schedule |
| Rent or revenue affected | 4,200.00 | Sum of the areas out of use |
| Emergency and mitigation costs | 310.00 | Entered as they are incurred |
| Total loss | 5,350.00 | The three lines above, added by the sheet |
| Policy excess | 500.00 | From the policy |
| Net claim after excess | 4,850.00 | Total loss less the excess |
Look at the second line rather than the first. The physical damage came to 840: eighteen square metres of stained and collapsed ceiling tiles, six years old, replaced rather than repaired. The loss of rent came to 4,200, because twenty-four desks were out of use for four weeks. The rent is five times the damage, and it sits in a separate part of most policies, which is exactly why the document keeps a table for it rather than folding it into the damage schedule. A report that lists the ceiling and stops has understated this claim by more than eighty per cent before the excess is even applied.
Word to write up one event and hand it to an insurer, Excel for the claim arithmetic and the damage register across a portfolio, PDF for the claim file. Free, and yours to rebrand.
How do you write a property damage report?
Fill in Part B before Part C. The mitigation actions are the ones that expire, and the costs can be worked out once the building is stable. Six steps.
Record both times, and who found it
The date and time the damage occurred and, separately, the date and time it was discovered, plus who discovered it and who they reported it to. Then the property, the area affected, the owner or agent, and whether the building was occupied at the time.
Name the peril precisely
Escape of water is not flood, and neither is storm. Record the peril, what happened, the point of origin or failure, the weather where it is relevant, and answer whether a maintenance failure caused it rather than leaving that question for the adjuster.
Photograph everything before you move it
This is the first mitigation action because it is the only one that cannot be done afterwards. Then make the area safe, isolate the water, power or gas, extract standing water, start drying, and move contents and stock out of reach.
Log every mitigation action with a time against it
Twelve actions, each with who did it and when. Temporary repairs, boarding, securing the building, retaining damaged items for inspection rather than throwing them away, and rehousing occupants. This is the section that protects the claim.
Secure the evidence that expires
CCTV first, because it overwrites itself within about thirty days. Then dated photographs, invoices and valuations for damaged items, the maintenance and service history for whatever failed, the weather report, witness statements and utility readings.
Schedule the damage, then the areas out of use
Every damaged item with its location, the damage, its age, whether it is repaired or replaced, and the cost. Then the areas out of use with the rent or revenue affected. Get quotes before agreeing any settlement figure, and notify the insurer within days rather than weeks.
The damage report versus the incident report
One event can need both of these documents, and people routinely file only one. They answer different questions for different readers.
| Aspect | Property damage report | Incident report |
|---|---|---|
| What it records | Damage to a building and its contents | Harm, or a near miss, to a person |
| Who reads it first | An insurer or a loss adjuster | An investigator, then possibly a regulator |
| The money question | What the claim comes to after the excess | Exposure, and days away from work |
| How cause is handled | Whether a maintenance failure caused it | Immediate cause, then root cause, kept apart from the facts |
| The clock on it | Notify the insurer within days, not weeks | A regulator may need telling the same day |
| If both apply | You raise this one as well | You raise this one as well |
The last row is not a joke. A ceiling that comes down in an occupied office is both events at once, and this template asks the question directly: anyone injured, yes or no, a separate incident report is required. Filing only the damage report leaves the injury unrecorded and the reporting clock unstarted; filing only the incident report leaves the claim unevidenced and the loss of rent unclaimed. The two documents share a date and almost nothing else, which is why neither one has a section that tries to do the other's job.
When the template starts to feel limiting
A form handles one event well. It handles a property portfolio badly, and always in the same four ways.
Notification deadlines cannot count themselves
Most policies require notification within days. A completed report in a folder does not tell you the window closes on Friday, and a late notification is a reason to reduce a claim that has nothing to do with the damage.
Evidence expires quietly
CCTV overwrites in about thirty days. Nothing in a document chases the footage, so the request gets made when the adjuster asks for it, which is usually after it is gone.
Repeats are invisible
Whether this is the first escape of water above that office or the third is the question that decides whether the cause was maintenance. On paper it is a folder search, so the honest answer is nobody knows.
Claims and repairs drift apart
The report becomes a claim; the damage becomes a repair job. Kept in two places, the settlement gets agreed without the final repair cost and the recovery from a third party never gets started.
What running this in Facilio looks like
The template is the paper version of this record. The fields are the same ones; the difference is that a notification deadline and a repeat failure at the same location stop depending on somebody remembering.
Work Completion Validator
Mitigation cannot be claimed without evidence
On paper a mitigation action is done when it is ticked. Work Completion Validator holds each one against evidence, so drying started or the water isolated carries a time and a record rather than an assertion.
Ops Performance Intelligence
Notification and evidence deadlines raise their own work
The insurer notification window and the CCTV overwrite period both run from the date of the event, so each surfaces as work before it lapses rather than when somebody asks for it.
Audit Report Intelligence
Repeats at a location become a query
How many escapes of water above that floor in three years, and how many were maintenance failures: held as data, so the question a loss adjuster asks has an answer that does not depend on a folder search.
Contractor Work Tracker
The claim and the repair stay attached
The quotes, the selected contractor and the final repair cost sit against the same record as the claim, so the settlement is agreed against what the work actually cost.
Hallucination-free by design. Atom AI answers from the records in your tenant rather than generating plausible text, so an empty field reads as empty rather than filled in for you.
Frequently asked questions
What is a property damage report?
A property damage report is the record of damage to a building and its contents, written to the standard an insurer will test. It captures when the damage happened and when it was discovered, the peril that caused it, whether a maintenance failure was involved, the steps taken immediately to stop it getting worse, the evidence held, a schedule of what was damaged with the age of each item, the areas put out of use, and the claim after the excess.
It is not an incident report. If anybody was hurt, that is a separate document and this template says so directly.
What should a property damage report include?
The report number, the occurrence and discovery times, who found it and who they told, the property and area, the owner or agent, and whether the building was occupied. The peril, what happened, the point of origin, the weather where relevant, whether maintenance caused it, and any previous damage at that location.
Then twelve mitigation actions with names and times, a twelve-line evidence register, the damage schedule with ages, the areas out of use with rent affected, repair quotes, a claim summary that nets off the excess, the insurer and third party details, and sign-off.
Why record the time it happened and the time it was discovered separately?
Because the gap between them is what an insurer uses to judge whether the damage was made worse by delay. A pipe that failed on Friday evening and was found on Monday morning has caused three days of damage that a pipe found within the hour would not have.
Recording one combined time hides that, and hiding it does not help you. What protects the claim is the pair of times plus the mitigation log showing what happened once it was found.
Why does the age of each damaged item matter?
Because it decides whether the settlement is new-for-old or takes a deduction for wear and tear. A six-year-old suspended ceiling and a six-month-old one are the same repair and a different payment.
It also matters because it is the easiest fact to establish on the day and one of the hardest afterwards. An age left blank tends to resolve in the insurer's favour, so guessing at it later costs you money.
What is loss of rent and why is it separate from the damage?
Loss of rent, or business interruption, is the revenue you lose because part of the property cannot be used. It is a separate part of most policies from the physical damage, which is why this template keeps a table for the areas out of use rather than folding it into the damage schedule.
It is also routinely the largest figure on the form. In the worked example on this page the physical damage is 840 and the rent affected is 4,200, five times as much, so a report that lists the ceiling and stops claims 840 against a total loss of 5,350.
What evidence should I keep, and what expires?
Dated and located photographs, a video walkthrough, invoices or valuations for the damaged items, the asset register entry, the maintenance and service history for whatever failed, the weather report for the date, witness statements, any crime reference, the loss adjuster or contractor report, utility readings before and after, and the damaged component itself.
The one that expires is CCTV, which usually overwrites within about thirty days. Secure a copy on the day rather than requesting it once the claim is queried, by which point it is often gone.
Can I edit and rebrand this template?
Yes. It is free to use, edit, rename and put your own logo on, internally or for clients. No attribution required.
The Word version is the one to edit if you want to write up a single event, change the peril list or match your own insurer's requirements. The Excel version is the one to use if you want the claim summary arithmetic and the damage register, which totals the damage, the rent affected and the mitigation costs and nets off the excess for you.
In one paragraph
A property damage report is written for an insurer, so the parts that feel like admin are the parts that pay. Record the time the damage happened and the time it was found as two entries, because the gap is the first thing that gets questioned. Photograph everything before it moves, then log all twelve mitigation actions with a name and a time against each, since a claim can be reduced where reasonable steps were not evidenced. Secure the CCTV within the first days rather than the first month. Age every damaged item, because age is what decides new-for-old against a deduction for wear. And fill in the areas out of use: loss of rent sits in a separate part of most policies and it is frequently several times larger than the damage itself.
The template is the floor, not the ceiling
Take the report; it will evidence one claim properly and stand up to an adjuster. When a folder of reports stops being enough, a connected CMMS runs it: notification deadlines that raise their own work, mitigation held against evidence, repeat failures at a location answerable as a query, and the repair cost attached to the claim it settles.
