National AutoBody Research (NABR) has announced the launch of its BillableGenie online service, an independent, centralized source of actual data on insurer paid not-included procedures and operations, labor rates, labor rate concessions and other manually entered estimate line items.
Collision repairers can sign up for access at www.BillableGenie.com and immediately begin finding documented examples of various insurers paying body shops for a wide variety of not-included operations. (Current VRS subscribers already have access to BillableGenie as part of their subscription.)
The primary purpose of BillableGenie is to provide the industry greater data transparency that enables more consistency and predictability in treating necessary but not-included operations and procedures as standard and expected billable items.
“BillableGenie represents a favorable disruption in the collision repair industry because it breaks through the secrecy and obstacles to obtaining this valuable data, providing a high degree of transparency never before available,” said Sam Valenzuela, president of NABR.
BillableGenie opens the floodgates of opportunity to see real repair data, which clearly reveal that body shops are charging for – and insurers are paying for – hundreds of not-included procedures shops often get told are not paid, or that they are the “only ones” charging for these items.
“It levels the playing field by providing all body shops nationwide with equal access to a transparent view of paid not-included procedures data and much more, not available anywhere else,” said Valenzuela. “Because the data goes all the way down to the individual repair level, there is not any deeper level data to be had. This is as far as it goes. And the data cannot be any clearer. Neither shops nor insurers have any excuse anymore for not billing or paying for any not-included item that many other shops and insurers have already billed and paid for.”
BillableGenie enables estimate data searches by keyword, insurer, procedure, labor rate paid, labor type, vehicle make and state. Search results include all these items plus date, vehicle year and model, labor hours, refinish hours, amount paid and total dollar value of all not-included or added items.
It enables any shop to prove they are not the only one charging for these items, and it shows that insurers do in fact pay shops for these all over the country. Shops can now support their billable charges with documentation from other paid estimates, often including a specific insurer claim number of an individual repair.
BillableGenie already contains data from tens of thousands of line item entries from actual final estimates showing the payment of hundreds of not-included operations, including labor rate concessions made to pay higher labor rates on luxury and specialty vehicles. The data set continues to grow as more body shop participants from NABR’s recently announced Collision Research Panel continue to share repair data of paid, not-included procedures, creating an increasingly valuable resource for body shops everywhere.
