The deductible you never collect, and the scope you never fully write. Two separate problems, kept separate. Nothing you type leaves this page.
Before you treat the deductible leak as a business choice, check your state. Not collecting a deductible is not always yours to decide. Several states make it unlawful for a contractor to pay, waive, absorb, rebate, or decline to collect a customer's insurance deductible. Texas puts the offense at
Bus. & Com. Code 27.02(c), a Class B misdemeanor, and it carries
no dollar threshold at all. The $1,000 figure belongs to a separate notice duty at 27.02(b). Reading it as a floor under the offense is the common mistake, and it is the expensive one. Colorado bars it for residential roofing at
C.R.S. 6-22-105. Look up the rule in every state you work, because there the honest answer to that leak is a compliance fix, not a collections improvement.
Where this one stops. These are the two upfront leaks. Dollars you find and capture after the estimate is approved belong in the supplement recovery calculator, not here, so you do not count the same missed-scope dollars twice. The scope side is usually the bigger of the two, and it is the one owners argue about least, because nobody sees it leave.
Write down both inputs and the date you set them, so the next run measures a change rather than a new guess. An educational estimate based on your inputs.